The Nietzsche Classes
by Beringae
Summary: The Ministry takes action against the remaining prejudice in the wizarding society and asks Hermione for help. “What do you want? Money? Power? Name your price, Granger. I’m not about to let pride get in my way when an Azkaban sentence is on the line.”
1. Prologue

**I do not own anything pertaining to the Harry Potter series and franchise.**

Chapter: Prologue

-

_That which does not kill me, makes me stronger._

_-- The Twilight of the Idols, Friedrich Nietzsche_

-

**_Ministry of Magic Decree #24,357 _**

_**In light of the defeat of He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named (Lord Voldemort) by one Harry Potter, any persons—namely offspring or acquaintances of his followers—who demonstrate sympathy towards his ideals, philosophy, or cause and are unable to convince the Wizengamot of their allegiance to the Light will be sentenced to one year of incarceration in Azkaban Prison.** _

_-_

She told them they were insane.

"Miss Granger, that was uncalled for."

Hermione stared incredulously at Rufus Scrimgeour and Percy Weasley, the former of which had just reprimanded her for her rudeness. "I apologize, Minister," she said breathlessly, her head feeling rather detached and very far away from her body. She steadied herself with a discreet touch of her hand to the wall behind her. "Is—Is there no one else? I mean… I have a _history_ with these people. I know them from before. They're not going to listen to me."

"Hermione," reasoned Percy quietly, "there _is_ no one else."

Her face fell when she realized the truth behind his statement. They had lost many in the Five Year War.

"No one else has the qualifications, knowledge, or experience regarding this matter. The Ministry asks this of you because it knows that you will remain devoted to the task, and will ensure that none of these people get out of this thing without a tremendous psychological transformation having taken place. We…We can't survive another war like this, Miss Granger. We can't risk someone else attempting to continue what he started," rasped Scrimgeour through his damaged trachea. One of Voldemort's lesser followers had planted a toxic, fume-emitting herb in his office several years ago; it had not been the first or last attempt on his life.

Hermione's eyes flicked back and forth between the two men before her, her expression calculating. "Harry suggested you ask me, didn't he?" Percy looked at his hands and Scrimgeour nodded slightly. She gave a dry sort of laugh, both amused and furious. "I'll deal with him later. As for now… I'll do it. I don't know why, but I'll do it."

"A last revenge, perhaps? Eliminate the last of him, once and for all?" Offered the minister in response to her vague reasoning, raising one wide shoulder in a half-shrug.

She smiled wryly, returning his shrug. "Perhaps. Next week, you said…Saturday at one o' clock?" They nodded simultaneously. With a faint rustle of her robes, she turned to exit, trying desperately to suppress the feeling that she had just agreed to sign her own death warrant.

"We will supply you with Aurors, of course. Any protection you might feel would be appropriate under the circumstances," said Scrimgeour.

Hermione shook her head. "These people may not listen to me, Minister, but I can assure you that I know how to handle them." And then, with an ironic eyebrow raised, "I survived the war, didn't I?"

They didn't argue with that.

"Saturday at one. I'll be there."

-

"_In individuals, insanity is rare; but in groups, parties, nations, and epochs it is the rule."_

_-- Beyond Good and Evil, Friedrich Nietzsche_

-

**Author's Note**: This should be very interesting… and _somewhat_ original, I hope. Keep in mind this is just the prologue. More information about Hermione's task will be revealed in the next chapter. The next chapter will be much longer and probably won't appear until at least next weekend. I'm very busy, and I have other fics I need to focus on lest my readers attack and seriously maim me. Please note that this will not be very long… ten chapters at the most.

Tell me what you think and, as always, enjoy!


	2. The Ministry Decree

Chapter: Ministry Decree #24,358

-

_"At times one remains faithful to a cause only because its opponents do not cease to be insipid."_

_-- Friedrich Nietzsche_

-

_Harry, _

_I've just been to the Ministry. Come to my flat now if you know what's good for you—you've some explaining to do._

_– Hermione_

_-_

"You _told_ Percy that I would be the best choice for this… this…"

"Endeavor?" Harry supplied helpfully as he stepped from Hermione's fireplace, brushing the soot from his shirt. Hermione was pacing before him, one hand tangled securely in her disobedient hair as she fumed.

"_Yes!_ It's ridiculous, Harry! Those people aren't going to listen to me!" She cried, stalking past Harry's stationary form but refusing to look at him.

"Hermione," he began, catching her elbow and forcing her to stop and face him, "you're the best one for the job…the _only_ one for the job. Everyone else…" He swallowed carefully. "You can make them listen to you."

Hermione stared helplessly at him, willing her mind to think of some other way, someone else who could take her place. But it was true, what Scrimgeour had said; she _was_ the only one who could do it. Most of the professors at Hogwarts were killed during the war, and no one else had survived who possessed enough free time and devotion to the cause as she did. Her voice sounded painfully soft as she spoke. "But… I'm Muggle-born, and they… they _hate_ me. We've known each other since we were children, Harry. What could possibly compel them to take me seriously?"

She felt a spark of irritation as Harry's lips quirked upwards in a faint smile. "Hermione, if anyone can do this, you can. During the war I saw you take down incredibly powerful wizards twice your size. This job isn't even dangerous."

She shot him a dry look and sank down abruptly onto an armchair, cradling her head in her hands. "I just don't know if I can do it, Harry," she admitted quietly. "I don't know if I can handle that hate again. After the war I swore that I would never have anything more to do with those sorts of people."

"Yes, but picture the look on Malfoy's face."

Hermione had to smile at that.

-

The next day, Ministry Decree #24,358 was released.

-

Every week she and Ginny met at the quiet little tea parlour several blocks from her flat. Her friend's bright hair was not hard to distinguish in the sunny interior of the room, and Hermione weaved through the masses to sit across from her with a fatigued sigh. "Hello, Ginny."

"Can you believe it?" Asked the youngest Weasley, her eyes radiant with glee as she pushed the morning _Prophet_ across the table. "This is absolutely _brilliant_."

Hermione didn't look at the paper but she knew what Ginny was thinking. "Mhmm," she hummed, ordering herself a cup of herbal tea as the waitress arrived. No cream, no sugar. Ginny looked at her strangely.

"Why aren't you more happy?" She asked, the light in her eyes turning ruthless, hungry—Ginny had changed a lot during the war. "We're finally getting revenge on the last of V-Voldemort. All that's left of him will be gone, once and for all. Think of all those cruel bastards finally having to stoop to doing _this_!" She looked triumphant, a glorious smile on her lips. "I thought that last week's decree was the furthest they were willing to go, with just the Azkaban sentence. Of course, that's not too difficult to evade, for people like those high-classed purebloods. They can talk their way out of anything…but _this_… This is bloody fantastic! It's _almost_ restored my faith in the Ministry!"

Hermione forced a hesitant smile, sipping her tea meekly as Ginny elaborated on the merits of the Ministry of Magic's latest decree and stubbornly ignoring the knot of anxiety in her stomach.

_Saturday at one o' clock._

Her eyes drifted over the _Daily Prophet_, resting briefly over the large, bold print at the head of the front page.

**_Ministry of Magic Decree #24,358_**

_**Offspring of all known supporters—particularly "Death Eaters"—of He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named (Lord Voldemort) shall from hereafter be required to take a six-week course at the Ministry of Magic, in which the delusions and fallacies of Lord Voldemort's position will be discussed. If any of the offspring of said supporters refuse to participate in this mandated class or are removed from the class for a justified reason by the instructor, the penalty discussed in Ministry of Magic Decree #24,357 will be enacted and the perpetrator will be sentenced to a one year incarceration in Azkaban Prison.**_

"Hermione?"

Hermione jerked her head up to see Ginny watching her reproachfully. "Have you been listening to anything I've been saying?" She asked, gathering her red hair—perfectly styled and smooth, Hermione noted with a trace of bitterness—into a knot at the base of her neck.

"I'm sorry, Ginny. I'm afraid I've been a bit distracted lately." Her fingertips scratched over the surface of the table as if with a will of their own.

"You _do_ seem awfully quiet. Is anything the matter?" Her friend's eyebrows drew together in concern and she reached out to pat Hermione's restless hand.

_Scratch scratch._

"Of course not. The Ministry's just asked me to do something that I'm not too keen on at the moment. I'll get over it."

"Oh… What is it? It can't be that terrible, can it?"

"It's not, don't worry. What were you saying while I wandered off?"

Ginny's ruthless smile returned. "I was just wishing that I was the instructor of that class. Did you read it? "If any of the offspring of said supporters refuse to participate in this mandated class or are _removed from the class for a justified reason by the instructor_," they go to Azkaban! I'd lock them all out! I suppose it's one of those stuffy Ministry officials, though. At least it will be a complete bore. Imagine all of those Slytherin stuck-ups…" Ginny trailed off as she noticed the expression on Hermione's face.

_Scratch scratch._

"Merlin, Hermione, you're face just went absolutely white! What's wrong?"

_Scratch scratch_. Hermione took a deep breath, her hand finally moving from the table to clasp stiffly around her steaming mug of tea. "It's me, Ginny. That thing with the Ministry… Scrimgeour and Percy asked me to be the instructor."

Ginny stared at her, her mouth slightly ajar. Hermione waited patiently, her the stiffness in her fingers abating gradually as she drank her tea. She rather thought that the significance and consequences of the situation had not caught up with her yet, for she felt perfectly calm. Ginny, on the other hand, was scrubbing her face with her palms and making quiet, frustrated sounds as she thought.

"Tell them you won't do it," she finally declared, hitting the table with her fist with more force that was perhaps necessary.

"What? Two minutes ago you were telling me how wonderful a job it would be!"

"Yes, but…" Hermione could see her friend falter, close her eyes, and inhale deeply. "Hermione, during the war… you had a hard time of it. We all saw… with Ron…" She paused as if the name physically hurt her. Hermione flinched, the tightness of her pain shooting from her chest, down her spine, and back again. "I just don't want you to be exposed to all of it again," Ginny finished, taking yet another breath.

Hermione smiled sadly, embracing Ginny's hand with her own. "They seemed to think I'm the best option for the job. I'll manage, Ginny. I can handle it."

"Alone? You always handle things alone, Hermione. Let us help."

"Harry's already insisted that he come for the first class. Don't worry."

-

The dreams came very often.

_Ron kisses her, and a viscous heat grows between them. Understanding and safety. Innocence and lust. _

_Familiar bodies on the familiar grass. Someone's arms around her and tears._

_Harry. A flash of green and an inhuman sound, a dissonant shriek. Two silhouettes fall and only one is breathing. Victory and pain. She screams._

_Solitude. She is alone. An ashen face and blossom of blood. _

_Hogwarts. Home. Love. All that she has lost. The war shines red in her mind._

The dreams came very often, and every time she awoke breathless on a damp pillow.

-

Hermione could not remember a time in her life in which she had not been researching something. It was her method of coping, of surviving whatever obstacles happened to cross her path.

Saturday at one o'clock was most definitely an obstacle. And so she researched.

The history of Muggle-Wizard relations. The origins of prejudice in the Wizarding community. Voldemort and his cause. The Death Eater's rationalizations for torture. Torturing methods. The origins of torturing methods. The biography of Tom Riddle alias Lord Voldemort. The origins and validation of transgression of the law by criminals. Methods, rationalization, and reasons for punishment.

Hermione's eyes froze over the page. _Crime and punishment._

She always had an extraordinary passion for classic muggle literature. At Hogwarts she had been known for her ability to rattle off every single novel by Dickens, Austen, the Brontës, and the classic Russian authors (Turgenev, Dostoevsky, and Tolstoy, to name a few) on command—in alphabetical order. Needless to say, it had earned her more than her fair share of odd looks, as most of her fellow students had never even _seen_ a muggle classic, let alone read one.

Naturally, after reading each of these engrossing classics, she had researched the author and his or her inspiration accordingly. _Crime and Punishment_ by Fyodor Dostoevsky had peaked her interest—she had been fascinated by the study of human conscience and validation of dreadful crimes that the subconscious creates. And now, she found herself wondering. There were certainly parallels… Perhaps she could put them to good use?

Hermione recalled something about a philosopher she had pursued in her research whose ideas were similar to those in _Crime and Punishment_. Something German and difficult to pronounce, she thought. Perhaps beginning with an "N"? With a sigh, Hermione sorted through her jumbled memories, closing her eyes and leaning back into the cushions of the comfortable armchair before the fire in her flat. Her breath eventually evened and she drifted into slumber, for once not dreaming the same dreams as before, but instead pictures of St. Petersburg, gory axes, and journalistic articles on crime floated beneath her closed eyelids.

-

The next morning, over breakfast and an encyclopedia, her eyes were wide as they read. A smile crept over her face.

_It might just catch their interest._

-

The week seemed to pass in a matter of hours. Hermione felt as if she had only just found enough time to plan the six lessons she would be required to teach, all the while combating the anxiety that was becoming a more persistent presence on her stomach as the days wore on.

At 12:50 on Saturday, she met Harry outside the door of the Ministry classroom she was to teach her class in. She had been a bit taken aback to discover that the Ministry did indeed have a section of their building devoted entirely to classes for whatever anyone might need—from gnome handling to household potion brewing to living in a muggle community—but somewhat impressed nonetheless. She had been given the largest classroom and was expecting a group of close to forty "students," most of whose names she recognized on the list that the Ministry had given her in order to check off the arrivals. She was unpleasantly surprised to find that many of her old Slytherin classmates were present on said list, Malfoy and his thugs, Millicent Bulstrode, Pansy Parkinson, and Blaise Zabini included. In fact, the only Slytherins she did not see on the list were Theodore Nott and the others who had not been lucky enough to weasel out of an Azkaban sentence after the war.

As expected, her knees were rather weak as she walked into the empty classroom. Harry, limping along beside her (the last battle had rendered his knee-joint inflexible—it had been one of his less serious injuries), was a comforting presence at her side. She felt him touch her arm as she used her desk at the front as a means of support for her slightly faint condition, pressing the palm of her hand against its flat surface.

"You're sure you're up for this, Hermione?" He asked. She could hear the concern in his voice.

"Of course," she said, her tone surprisingly strong. She set her extensive amount of equipment for the lesson on the top of the desk, opening up the bag and beginning to sort through its contents.

He didn't look convinced. After several moments of silence in which the ticking of the enchanted clock above the door was the only distraction from the tension of the situation, Harry spoke in a quieter voice than before, "I don't trust them."

Hermione smoothed her hair back into its tasteful bun at the crown of her head and shot him a helpless smile, leaning her hip against the desk. "You think I do? We _fought_ these people. I'm going to need some time to adjust, but the Ministry is trying to do its part to finish this war Harry. We have to help as well."

Harry opened his mouth to provide her with an answer but another response took its place. The voice was an annoyingly familiar drawl, although admittedly a bit more bad-tempered than usual and accompanied by the snickers of his ever-present ensemble.

"How touching, Granger. You've managed to remain as maddeningly wholesome as ever, I see. Now, where is our instructor?" He spit out the last work like it was a particularly foul-tasting poison.

Hermione didn't even look at him, barely acknowledging his presence save for a reply. She stared into Harry's eyes, gathering her strength from her life-long friend. "You are speaking to her presently, Malfoy. If you would please take your seat, I will wait until everyone has arrived and then we will begin."

She didn't hear any footsteps and the snickering had stopped. Finally, Hermione turned to assess the group in the doorway that consisted completely of familiar faces from her school days, and raised one cool eyebrow. They were all staring at her, more than several mouths agape. "Unless, of course," she began, her face carefully neutral, "you would rather serve your 'one year incarceration' in Azkaban. Again, please take your seats."

-

_"In heaven all the interesting people are missing."_

_-- Friedrich Nietzsche_

-

**Author's Note**: Ta da! I hope that didn't totally fly over people's heads. Throughout this story I'll attempt to integrate a reasonable amount of classical literature, philosophy, science, and, of course, romance, Harry Potter-ness, and interesting plot together into one monster of a story. I hope that suits at least one person's tastes! Maybe you have to be an English freak like me to get the parallels I will be drawing between literature, philosophy, and Voldemort, but I hope it's interesting, at least. Tell me what you think!

Also, you totally won't get the last dream references (St. Petersburg, gory axes, etc.) unless you've actually read _Crime and Punishment._So go readthe damn thingif you didn't understand it! I'm kidding, of course. I can't force you to do anything... or can I? But seriously, everyone should read that novel... it's amazing.

If you enjoyed this (remember, there is much more to come), check out my other HP fics (The Third Law, Counting, and A Particularly Difficult Night this one maybe not, seeing as it is completely and utterly odd). They are all short, and I have longer stuff in the POTC fandom. Go figure. And yes, as I've said many times before, I am a shameless self-advertiser.

Next Chapter: Class #1. How is everyone going to react? What is our poor Hermione going to do?

Yay! This is so fun.


	3. UnSympathy

Chapter: Un-Sympathy

-

"_**The visionary lies to himself, the liar only to others."**_

_**-- Friedrich Nietzsche**_

-

"_Again, please take your seats."_

He sat. He sat and Hermione ignored her students as they entered the bleak whiteness of the classroom, focusing instead on rummaging through her large bag and placing an impressive collection of forty identical books on her desk. She stacked them in neat rows, her hands shaking only slightly, only enough so that she could see the near invisible tremor.

But Harry saw. With a concerned frown, he caught her hand in his and squeezed, leaning in to kiss her briefly on the cheek, offering her comfort the only way he knew how. _She_ was unfailingly the one to provide comfort, and when their roles happened to be reversed Harry always seemed a bit lost. Hermione smiled stiffly, watching him as he turned and limped to the back of the room and sat tensely in the shadows and resolutely ignored Malfoy's sneer. His presence was met with disgust and fear, with significantly more of the latter. This man, this Harry Potter, had killed their Dark Lord, a force thought to be unstoppable and immortal.

Hermione didn't blame them for being frightened. Sometimes Harry frightened even her with his power and intensity.

_Two silhouettes fall and only one is breathing._

She discreetly counted the number of students—she still found herself wanting to burst out laughing at the thought that these people, her classmates, the Death Eaters' children, were her _students_—and established that everyone was present. The murmur of voices that had been prominent as people were entering the room now quieted as her students looked up at her, slightly unnerved by her actions, or lack thereof. She was just _standing._ Standing and looking at them, her eyes blank.

And then the room was completely silent. Hermione allowed herself an internal smile of triumph.

When she saw that they were beginning to become concerned by her stillness (a fleeting glance sideways, a folding of the hands over a desk, a touch on the hair, perhaps a nervous tension in the shoulders) she finally spoke. Her voice was quiet and yet she doubted that anyone failed to hear her.

"The war is over. Voldemort is dead."

A collective gasp. _No one_ said his name, not even after the war. Pansy's white hand fluttered over her chest and Hermione watched the blood drain from her face. Crabbe and Goyle stared at her stupidly, their eyes wide. Zabini only flinched. Malfoy half stood up, his fist pressing so hard on the table that Hermione heard his knuckles crack from across the room.

"How _dare_ you. You're not fit to say his name, you filthy, disgusting, Mu—" He hissed, his eyes narrowed into slits. Now it was Harry's turn to rise from his seat, moving fast towards the fuming man, murder contorting his face.

Hermione almost faltered. She almost fell. That name had once leveled her to the ground, once prompted tears from her eyes. Then she had been immune to its hate, when it had been used against her time and again during the war. Now, when she knew that she would hear it again, it brought everything back.

_The war shines red in her mind._

_No._

No, she thought finally. You're stronger than this.

And so she interrupted him. He was halfway through the hateful word when she spoke, revealing first threads of disgust in her tone.

"Sit _down_, Malfoy. I suppose you didn't hear what I said, hmm? _The war is over._ We have no more use for prejudice, ignorant slurs, and hate. Your side lost." Her eyes flitted to Harry, before she took a deep breath and spoke again, her voice very firm. "And Malfoy… if you ever, _ever_ even start to utter that word again I will lock you out of this classroom and you won't be let back in—that goes for all of you. I assume you all have read the Decree?" Her question was met with cautiously blank faces, but she knew that they all had. "Then you know what happens if I remove you from this class. I will not tolerate rudeness, bigotry, or fanaticism. If you want to argue a point, do so civilly with evidence to support it. In other words, act like decent people. I assume you are all capable of that?"

It was a rhetorical question; the class took the hint and remained mute. She paused for a moment, her eyes sweeping over the seated mass before her. Malfoy had sunk down into his seat again, eyeing her with deftly concealed shock, one pale eyebrow raised. People shifted uncomfortably in their seats. Hermione knew that she put forth a very different image now than she had when they had known one another during school. Harry looked at her with something like pride in his eyes.

She had no sympathy for these would-be murderers. Once, maybe, she would have felt pity for the loss of their parents to either death or Azkaban, but not now. Now, she knew the deadly consequences of their prejudice and thus could not accept it. It was her job to enlighten these people, and she was not so ignorant as to think that she would not have to essentially force them to listen to her.

"I'm not asking you to enjoy this class. You do not even have to like me," she continued, prompting a surprised expression from Harry and many of the other people in the room. "It all comes down to toleration, doesn't it? You tolerate me, I tolerate you. You all know who I am, and I know who most of you are… not all, but we will remedy that soon. You know what my position was in the war. I fought for the light, you supported the dark. We are different, but we are the same." She ignored the several incredulous snorts of disagreement that sounded around the room. Her voice was growing stronger now, and passion sparked continually in her eyes. She believed what she was saying with all her heart. _Conviction_.

"We tolerate one another, now, in this classroom, and outside, on the streets. Whether or not you like it, it's what we do. Society relies on toleration. The rights our government gives us—freedom to think as we please, namely—it is inevitable that differing opinions, factions, and people will arise. To live with some semblance of order, then, we have to be able to tolerate these opinions that differ from ours. If we do not, everything falls apart. _We_ fall apart. I know you've seen this, whether you like to admit it or not… it happened during the war, and it is threatening to happen again.

"Apparently, you all are having trouble with this toleration, this _simple_ concept." For the first time, the bitterness was palpable in her tone and expression. It was gone as soon as it had come, and she continued. "This is where my job comes in. I'm not naïve enough to be sure that I can change any of you. Most of you have been taught your opinions on wizarding society since birth." She shot a hard glance at Malfoy, Lucius's superior face as he sneered down at her flashing briefly in her mind. The son stared back at her stonily, anger radiating in a constant heat from his eyes. "I ask only that you listen with an open mind. _Let_ your ideas be challenged and question yourself. Allow your rational thought argue with your ideology. If you still find merit in your opinions, even after all of the six weeks we will be together, you may leave and be none the wiser; I will have tried my best. I will not alert the Ministry if I feel that you are still harboring loyalties to Voldemort, but that's not to say they won't find out on their own."

Hermione gazed steadily at her students. The majority of them were looking at her with something akin to hatred—after all, she had just insulted, albeit subtly, everything they knew. Several stared with amazement at this bold new creature, this Hermione Granger who was so _different_.

With a faint sigh, Hermione continued. "I know this will be difficult. I know right now many of you feel lost. I don't blame you. The war was won—or lost, depending on how you see it—only three months ago. It's a lot to adjust to."

She caught sight of Pansy and Millicent snickering at her apparent soft-heartedness, so typical of the old Hermione. "Don't mistake this for sympathy," Hermione snapped sharply. "You made your choice when the war broke out. I am merely expressing _understanding_."

"No we didn't," said a voice, both softly and with an edge at the same time.

"Oh?" Hermione questioned, turning to face Malfoy with a distinctive air of disbelief. "Enlighten me with your reasoning, then, Malfoy."

He reclined easily back in his uncomfortable, Ministry-issued desk like it was his throne, smirking at her with a focused resentment and antagonism hidden in the grayness of his eyes. "You can't 'understand,' Granger. Your Muggle parents weren't Death Eaters. Death Eaters don't give _anyone_ choices, not even their own children." The words were an unperturbed drawl, and it was only with her perceptiveness that Hermione noticed the slight lines of stress around his eyes, the resentment that was not _only_ directed towards her.

She detected several nods and grunts of agreement around the room, and smiled faintly. She did not falter, not this time. "You've always had a choice, Malfoy. You just never could see it," she insisted gently, noting with slight amusement as his eyebrows rose past his hairline. Wanting to keep on track, Hermione proceeded to the next part of her lesson.

"Now I think we should introduce ourselves. Please go from row to row, say your name and repeat the name 'Voldemort' at least twice." She frowned at the indignant and horrified exclamations that followed her instructions. "Be _quiet_… Thank you. A very great man once said that fear of a name only increases fear of the thing itself. Voldemort is dead, so there's nothing to fear. I'm Hermione Granger, and I've already repeated Voldemort's name far more than twice. We'll continue with Vincent." Crabbe looked rather startled to hear his first name from the lips of his enemy, but nevertheless complied. He stuttered over the 'V' sound in the name.

One by one they said the names. Pansy trembled so hard she dropped the quill she had been using to scrawl notes to Millicent and Daphne Greengrass. Hermione heard familiar surnames: Avery, Rookwood, Macnair, Dolohov, and Black, to name several. They all looked at her murderously as they repeated their Dark Lord's name. She felt her hands begin to tremble again; she had never been as brave as Harry. Each time any of these notorious family names left the lips of one of Hermione's students, she could see her friend visibly tense in the corner of her eye, his hand clutching his wand tightly in his pocket.

And then they reached the name Hermione had been dreading all afternoon.

"Vulpecula Lestrange. Lord Voldemort, Lord Voldemort."

Hermione had been just as shocked as Harry was now when she had learned that the Lestrange's had had a daughter. She had owled Percy to ensure that the name on the list was correct. He assured her that it was.

Vulpecula looked so much like Bellatrix that it was unnerving. The same dark, hooded eyes, the same pale skin. She looked very young, perhaps seventeen. Unlike her mother, she had not spent near fifteen years in Azkaban, and had Bellatrix's erstwhile beauty to show for it.

Harry looked very much as if he wanted to turn the girl into dust where she sat, swinging her long black hair, so very much like his hated enemy's, over the seatback of her chair. He was staring at her as if she were indeed Bellatrix Lestrange.

But that was impossible. Neville had killed Bellatrix in the last battle, finally avenging his parents, before he himself was hit with Lucius Malfoy's killing curse. Harry had grieved doubly: first for the loss of his friend, and second for his failure to avenge his godfather.

Hermione forced her mind back to the present

"Draco Abraxas Black Malfoy. Lord Voldemort, Lord Voldemort."

He was staring at her amusedly, as if sensing her discomfort. After making sure her eyes were on him, he jerked his head so rapidly that she might have been imagining it towards Vulpecula Lestrange and mouthed, "Like mother, like daughter." She disregarded him completely.

He and Lestrange had been the only two people in the room who had addressed Voldemort as "Lord" and had not wavered at all when saying his name. That she did not disregard, instead filing the information safely away for later consideration.

When the last person finished his name ("Marcus Flint, Vol-Voldemort… Voldemort!"), Hermione levitated a copy of her mysterious novel to each desk, silently thanking her skills in duplicating charms throughout—she had not wanted to spend the money and purchase forty copies of Dostoevsky. The majority of the students looked at the book with blank expressions, obviously not recognizing the Muggle classic. Hermione noticed Vulpecula glance at the cover and smile vaguely, seemingly unsurprised.

One person had not noticed this new development. Malfoy was whispering fervently to Zabini, a cruel sneer coloring his features. Hermione watched them for a moment until she broke the silence with a question.

"Care to inform us, Malfoy, as to what is so interesting?"

He stared at her lazily, the tips of his long fingers tapping against the surface of his desk. "I was just wondering," he clipped, his eyes obviously goading her, "how many Ministry officials you had to fuck to get this job, seeing as you're enjoying it so much."

Silence.

Harry's chair scraped out from underneath him as he jumped from his seat, his wand leveled instantly at Malfoy's white head. "You miserable _git_! Get the fu—"

Hermione, recovering from her shock, caught his eye and shook her head. _No, Harry. This is a test_. And she knew it was. Harry froze.

Malfoy was testing her.

How far could she go?

She gazed coolly at him, and he met her eyes steadily. He had not moved throughout the entire ordeal, not even when Harry had raised his wand.

And Hermione knew what she had to do.

"You think I _want_ to be here?" She asked softly, her face very hard. "You think I _enjoy_ being around you? I'm sorry to disappoint, Malfoy, but the Ministry had to nearly _beg_ me to do this. All of you," she gestured widely around the room, "made my life _hell_. I'm here because I am loyal to my cause. It's not a choice, it's something I have to do for everyone who was lost in that damn war."

Harry sat back down. Everyone looked at her in astonishment.

"_Now get out._"

Malfoy's mouth dropped open. "What?" He said, surprise chasing the cruelty from his voice.

"You heard what I said. Get out or I'll call the Aurors and they will _force_ you out."

Hermione had definitely seen an excess of hate in her life. But _nothing_ she had ever seen before matched the glare that Malfoy shot at her. Hermione reached discreetly into her robes and grasped her wand. _Just in case._

But instead of cursing her, Malfoy stood. His hands were curled into tight fists and a high flush colored his cheeks. As he passed her, he hissed, "This isn't over, Mudblood. You can't always have your bodygaurd around." He glanced hatefully towards Harry, before stalking out of the room. Hermione didn't reply, although her heart jumped quickly in her chest as she heard the door of the classroom slam shut with a resounding, final sound.

"Merlin," someone breathed.

Pansy whimpered quietly, her eyes trained on the door.

Hermione let the silence preside for half a minute, before she finally straightened and gazed at the frightened faces in the room.

_Fear._

She didn't need fear.

"Right. Now you know that I'm serious about this," she continued, her voice deceptively light, as if she had not just condemned someone to Azkaban for a year. "You all have a copy of Fyodor Dostoevsky's _Crime and Punishment_. A lesson plan for the next five classes is enclosed in the front cover. Please take not of this, and come prepared for the subject matter of each class. I assume that not many of you have heard of it. Dostoevsky was born in Moscow, Russia, in 1821…"

-

"Um… are you teaching an English class, Hermione?" Asked Harry once everyone else, muttering mutinously and with no small amount of confusion, had filed out of the room.

Hermione smiled. "Of course not, Harry! This class is just going to be a bit different than expected."

"Yes, but…Muggle classics? How can that possibly relate—"

"It will all come together next week. All they have to do is finish the book by next week"—this had caused minor protestations against the novel's length when she had introduced the assignment—"and I can take it from there. It will all come together eventually."

Harry was silent for a moment, and seemed to be debating within himself. Finally, he spoke darkly, "Did you know that Bellatrix had a daughter?"

Hermione shook her head.

"Oh. She looks…She looks like her."

But Hermione wasn't listening. Leaving Harry standing in the front of the room, she stepped over to the last remaining book sitting innocently on the desk and picked it up, smoothing her thumbs over the glossy paper of the cover. He watched her.

"Are you really throwing Malfoy out for good?" He asked quietly.

Hermione raised one shoulder in a shrug, still gazing at the heavy book in her hands. Harry walked up behind her, placing one hand on her shoulder. "He deserves it, Hermione… what he said about you…"

"He was just trying his limits, Harry. I had to make a point. They all thought I wasn't serious about…everything."

"He still deserves it."

Hermione turned towards him, patting his cheek fondly. "Thank you for being here today. It helped me. You should probably get home to Ginny, no? She'll be worried."

"Okay. See you later, Hermione." Harry grinned, kissed her on the cheek again, and disappeared with a disjointed pop. With a sigh, Hermione tucked the book under her arm, grabbed her back, and swung the door open to walk out into the hall. She knew that Malfoy would still be there, waiting for confrontation.

Her breath left her as something large collided into her, crushing her to the wall. Her bag slipped off her shoulder and quills and parchment spilled over the floor like a random game of chance. Gasping for breath, Hermione looked up to see the fury-contorted face of Draco Malfoy hovering over her. He hissed words into her face:

"I'm _not_ going to Azkaban, you meddling bitch."

Hermione shut her eyes and prepared to explain. He was pressing into her very hard, and she was finding it difficult to breath. She fought the fear down, subdued into her breast like a beast trying to escape, and opened her mouth to speak. He interrupted her.

"What do you want? Money? Power?" An angry pause. "Something else?" He asked coldly, rolling his hips suggestively against hers. Hermione squeaked in shock, digging her fingernails into his arm hard enough to leave small crescent curves on the white skin. He drew his breath hard through his teeth, backing away from her slightly.

"Name your price, Granger. I'm not stupid enough for pride when Azkaban is on the line." His voice was frightening her. She could tell he was livid, completely and entirely, but his voice was so calm that a blind man could have mistaken their exchange for a mere business deal.

Hermione was angry now, too. The anger triumphed over fear. "Get off me, Malfoy! You are such a _sorry_ excuse for a human being!" She took another deep breath, drawing the strength to continue from inside. "I came out here to give you this." She threw the copy of _Crime and Punishment_ at his feet when he stepped away from her, confused. "I'm giving you one last chance. _One._ If you step out of line again, I'll throw you out of the classroom for real."

His expression quieted, turning carefully neutral. "Fine," he said tightly, his lips drawn into that hateful sneer. "I suppose I have no choice."

"Yes, you do. You always have a choice. Didn't I just tell you that? It's only that one choice is much more agreeable than the other."

He didn't say anything.

"Read that," she pointed at the forlorn book on the floor, "by next class." And then she walked away.

-

_"**He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster. And if you gaze for long enough into an abyss, the abyss gazes also gazes into you."**_

**_-- Friedrich Nietzsche_**

-

**Author's Note**: Ooo. A bit more serious, no? Let me know what you think. Don't worry, next chapter brings much more intellectual talk, and Nietzsche comes into the picture.

Many thanks to the reviewers (Vashka, I have an interesting coincidence for you: the night before you reviewed, I discovered your story "Vengeance" and loved it, by the way, then you discovered mine. Hmm). I'm still amazed that people are enjoying this, seeing how different and odd it is. I thought people would see the names Dostoevsky and Nietzsche and flee with their hands over their ears. Shows what I know.

I had _so_ much fun writing this, it should be illegal. Malfoy is so entertaining.

In keeping with the Black family tradition, Vulpecula is indeed a constellation and the name translates into "The Fox."

Bye for now… next chapter should be up in about a week, maybe more.


	4. The Overman

Chapter: The Overman

-

"_**We are always in our own company."**_

_**-- Friedrich Nietzsche**_

-

Like every other day, when Hermione arrived home she dropped her bag on the carpeted entryway to her flat by the door. She let loose a great sigh, fisting her hand in her neat hairstyle and loosening the great mass, allowing it to fall in a tangled heap on her shoulders. She caught sight of her face in the mirror and saw that she looked very tired.

And like every other day, she stripped off her robes as she traversed the width of the neat sitting room to her bedroom, kicking off her heeled shoes and setting them in an orderly fashion by her closet. This left her in a respectable skirt and blouse, her panty-hosed feet looking strangely desolate without shoes on the carpet of her bedroom. She went to her dresser.

Like every other day, she opened the dresser. Like every other day, she reached into the drawer and shakily pulled out a large, slightly worn muggle t-shirt. Like every other day, she felt the pressure begin to build behind her eyes. Like every other day, she brought the cloth to her face and _breathed_.

_Ron._

Hermione sat abruptly down on the foot of her bed, her vision blurred as she remembered. The shirt was wrinkled with age and the salt of her own tears.

His scent was fading.

_An ashen face and blossom of blood._

Ron had slept in this shirt. Ron had eaten breakfast at her table in this shirt. Ron had made love to her in this shirt. Ron had _lived_ in this shirt.

Hermione closed her eyes and the tears spilled over her eyelashes to track slowly down her cheeks and into the treasured cloth bunched so very close to her.

They all said it was unhealthy, the way she was grieving. She hadn't worked. She hadn't read. She hadn't done _anything_. She would forget to take care of herself and skip meals, remembering the next day when her stomach felt as if something was gnawing at it from the inside that she needed to eat. She wouldn't sleep, afraid of the nightmares.

But this class, this _Ministry ordained_ task, was making her live. She had to work and research and prepare and be strong so that her once-enemies couldn't detect her weakness. It was exhausting.

Ron's scent was soft and unassuming, shampoo and detergent and sweat and something else distinctly male.

She felt the pain curl in her core and later she couldn't remember how long she sat, still with memories.

Finally, as if muffled through a blanket wrapped around her head, she heard a knock at her bedroom door. It was Ginny's voice telling her she and Harry had come to take her to the Weasley's for supper and she heard the class went well and what was she doing in there?

-

Harry and Ginny frowned at the redness of her eyes but said nothing when she emerged, face washed and hair neat once more, from the bedroom. She was running low on Floo powder so they apparated to the Burrow.

The Weasley family had been forever changed during the war. Molly Weasley greeted their arrival with a smile that did not hide the sadness in her eyes. Arthur maneuvered through the house on his enchanted chair, the stump of his right leg still bandaged even after months of peace. And Fred… Fred never laughed anymore.

That, Hermione thought as she gazed at their drawn faces through the doorway of the Burrow, was what disturbed her the most. It was _Fred_, once ever the jokester, who now looked morosely down at his plate during dinner. Hermione rather thought he lost half of himself during the war.

She tried not to notice the three empty spaces at the table. Mrs. Weasley still set their places, the napkins white and crisp, the silverware untouched.

Hermione could not imagine what it would be like to loose three children.

Mrs. Weasley ushered the three of them through the house, kissing Ginny and Harry on their cheeks and enveloping Hermione in a comforting hug. Hermione allowed herself to collapse momentarily against the older woman, allowed the tension and pain to leak from her for just a moment, before straightening as Molly insisted that the potatoes would burn if she was gone from the stove for one more second. They sat in the sitting room, the conversation at once turning concerned.

"We saw the article in the _Prophet_, Hermione. How come you didn't _tell_ us?" Mr. Weasley asked, his eyebrows—nearly white now—drawing inwards.

Hermione started. "What article?" She turned to Harry and Ginny, both looking distinctly uncomfortable. "_What _article?"

"W-We didn't want to worry you, Hermione," Harry explained.

Fred, having watched the exchange mildly, handed her the front page of the _Prophet_ without a sound. "Thank you, _Fred_," Hermione said pointedly, her eyes flitting towards Ginny, who stared at her lap.

She scanned the page. The headline was not hard to miss.

**Death Eater Class To Be Taught By Friend of Harry Potter, Ministry Says**

They had left nothing out. For the _Prophet_, Hermione noted, it was surprisingly accurate. She rubbed her hand over her eyes, sighing as she read.

"Look who the author is," Harry said quietly.

Hermione snorted as she did so. "I should have left her as a beetle. What an infuriating woman. She makes me sound like some sort of zealot, trying to rid the world of evil as revenge for—" She stopped abruptly at the look on Mr. Weasley's face. "Anyway, she has all of the _facts_ right, but the way she words them makes it seem like I went to the Ministry and volunteered readily for the job."

"You're not angry, then?" Charlie asked, watching her steadily. "I'd be _furious_, if I were you."

Hermione shrugged. "It was bound to come out at some point."

Mrs. Weasley emerged from the kitchen and sat down next to her husband. "Yes, but, dear, why didn't you tell us anything about it? We had to hear from Ginny."

Hermione picket at the skin around her fingernails nervously, her eyes on the floor. From the corner of her eyes she could see Ginny look at her sharply, but she wasn't angry. She had never asked her friend to keep secrets from her family. "I didn't want to get you all involved. I thought…" She trailed off, finishing in her head. _I thought it would break your family. I thought you wouldn't be able to cope with Death Eaters again, even juvenile ones._

She knew that this was horribly ironic, for they were obviously thinking the same about her. Maybe they were right. "I'll be okay," she said in response to the expressions on their faces. "I promise."

They looked unsure.

-

After Mrs. Weasley closed the door behind them Ginny began to cry. They stood on the doorstep and Hermione stared emptily into nothing as Harry put his arms around his lover and kissed her tears. Hermione, feeling distinctly uncomfortable, shifted on her feet and tapped her fingertips against the side of her thigh. Harry was whispering quickly into Ginny's ear, words of comfort and solace that Hermione knew could do nothing, but the redhead pushed him away after mere moments.

"No! Oh… My family… Harry, my family is _gone_!"

-

Several days later, Hermione paid Harry a visit at his house, newly constructed over the vacant lot that was once Godric's Hollow.

"How's Ginny?" Hermione asked, concern knitting her brow as she sat on one of the plush couches before the fireplace in Harry's living room.

Harry sighed, taking off his glasses to rub the bridge of his nose. "She's doing better. It's very hard for her… hard for all of us. I still…" He trailed off, before seeming to mentally shake himself awake to continue. "She's having a bit of a nap right now, else she'd come and say hello."

"Don't worry. I actually have a little favor to ask of you…"

-

The week passed quickly, and next Saturday found Hermione standing before her class (sans Harry, who she had had quite a time convincing not to come with her), a copy of _Crime and Punishment_ in hand. Her students gazed silently at her, the expression on the majority of their faces that of a petulant child.

"Did you all enjoy the book?" Hermione asked, leaning back casually against her desk.

Marcus Flint spoke up immediately. "I think there is a reason wizards don't read muggle literature," he said mildly, eyeing his copy of the book with evident distaste.

Hermione smiled. "I'm afraid you've got it wrong, Marcus. There is no such thing as "muggle" and "wizard" literature. It's all the same. Either way, you're entitled to your opinion. You didn't like it? Why not?"

He shrugged. "This Dostoevsky person was a nutter, to write a main character like Rask… Raskol…" He struggled over the Russian pronunciation.

"Raskolnikov," Hermione corrected gently.

"Yeah, him. The entire bloody book was about some bloke agonizing about murdering someone. I didn't see a point to any of it."

Hermione heard Vulpecula Lestrange snort from her seat near the back of the room. "Yes, Vulpecula?" She asked, curious despite her suspicion of Bellatrix's daughter.

"Vulpe, please. My parents were sadistic, both with names and otherwise," the girl said, a humorous smile twisting her lips.

_Is she… making a_ joke_ about her family?_

Hermione used quite a bit of effort to control the muscles in her jaw, which was trying furiously to drop open in amazement. "Oh… Well, Vulpe, did you have anything to say about the book?"

"Flint's an idiot."

Hermione waited, but nothing else came. Marcus glared at Vulpe, but his apparent fear of her kept any response at bay. "Hmm," Hermione continued. "Well, Marcus, what did you think about Raskolnikov's article?"

"What article?" He grunted.

"The article that spoke about extraordinary men and ordinary men."

"Oh." He looked confused, and his eyes flitted about the classroom as if he would find help on the faces of his peers. "What did that have to do with anything?"

"Hmm," Hermione said again, turning to pace the width of the classroom restlessly. This might be more of a challenge than she had thought. But first…

"Pansy, in the end of the book did Raskolnikov go to prison?" She asked abruptly, trying not to take pleasure in the look of panic on the other woman's face.

Pansy went a bit red, staring helplessly at her hands. "Umm… no?"

Hermione sighed. "You didn't finish it." It was not a question.

Pansy began to look angry, and clenched her fists hard against her desk. "What did you expect, Granger? It's more than four hundred pages long, for Merlin's sake! You gave us a week!"

"It is long, that I am not denying. But this is _important_, Pansy. Please try harder in the future," Hermione said shortly, inwardly exasperated.

"How is it important, Granger?" Asked Blaise, his exotic eyes narrowed as he regarded her coldly. "It's a bloodly muggle _book_. What can that possibly have to do with the Dark Lord?"

"Voldemort, you mean," she corrected him.

"_Voldemort, _then."

Hermione thought for a moment. "You'll see. Let's continue, shall we? Does anyone else have any comments about Raskolnikov's article 'On Crime'?"

Malfoy, having been silent throughout this entire exchange, finally spoke. Hermione had ignored him thus far, but she had felt his infuriating smirk directed towards her the entire lesson. "I think Raskolnikov was a genius," he said, his eyes fastened firmly upon her.

Hermione fought not to cringe, and when she met his gaze the expression on her face was instead calmly inquisitive. "How so, Malfoy?"

She still would not call him by his first name.

"Because it's _perfect_," he sneered. Hermione felt the familiar anger tightening in her chest again as she realized that he was purposefully acting nastier than usual to get a rise out of her. "'Ordinary men have to live in submission, have no right to transgress the law, because, don't you see, they are ordinary. But extraordinary men have a right to commit any crime and to transgress the law in any way, just because they are extraordinary,'" he continued, apparently reciting the passage from the book from memory. Hermione refused to be impressed by this. "It stands for everything we all believe in, and it's _perfect_. The Dark Lord would have been impressed. Congratulations, Granger, you've finally recognized the truth of it all."

Hermione fisted her hands in her robes but said nothing until the grunts and exclamations of agreement that rang from around the room died down. When it was silent, she said, "You've obviously read the book, Malfoy." A pause. "This philosophy was indeed the justification Raskolnikov used for the murder of the old pawnbroker. Raskolnikov considered her ordinary, a particle of filthy dirt in the entire scheme of things, a 'louse'. He, on the other hand, was an extraordinary man, a Napoleon. This explanation, whether subconscious on Raskolnikov's part or not, was why he killed her. He needed to _prove_ that he was extraordinary, that he could have _power_. Are you all following this?"

Most people nodded, many seemingly entranced by her words.

_Yes._

"Good. I am assuming this was what appealed to you, Malfoy?"

"Of course," he said simply, shrugging one lead shoulder.

"I thought so," she said quietly, a gleam of triumph evident in the brown of her eyes. "The idea that morals and laws mean nothing if one is extraordinary. 'Ordinary' human life means nothing, and therefore can be disposed of in order to gain power and recognition as something above everything else. This is what appeals to you _all_."

The chorus of affirmations sounded strangely sweet to her ears. Hermione smiled. "Have any of you ever heard of Friedrich Nietzsche?"

Unsurprisingly, no one had. She saw blank stares.

"I didn't expect anyone to know of him. He was a muggle philosopher. German, born in 1844. He was, interestingly enough, entirely insane for the last ten years of his life." Hermione paused for effect, smiling benignly. "His ideas vary greatly. He shunned Christianity, morals, and nihilism, although many scholars today consider him a nihilist himself. Morals, he believed, were a complete waste of time, and love of God caused people to be unappreciative of life on earth. He is famous penning the phrase 'God is dead.' But we aren't going to be focusing on those things. Do any of you here speak German?"

Several hands rose above the sea of heads before her, Malfoy's included.

"Can you tell me what 'übermensch' means?"

Malfoy drawled his translation almost boredly. "'Superman'. Or perhaps 'overman'."

"Exactly," Hermione affirmed, nodding. "Nietzsche believed that this overman was a select species of human, and everyone below him had a value equivalent to zero. His overman is not bound by the conventional standards of morality, and thus law. To put it simply, the übermensch can do whatever he likes, simply because he is better than everyone else. The mediocrity of the majority is something to be ignored and even eliminated. The overman exists in order to exert power over the rest of the inferior beings, and he is 'above the law.' He must have contempt for himself, a contempt that soon transfers to the rest of mankind, and which will then convey to mankind's moralities and laws. A rearing of a higher order is more important than the sacrifices of masses, sacrifices of the lesser species. This sacrifice, according to Nietzsche, is progress towards a greater, more meaningful world.

"Granted, I'm putting this in much harsher terms than Nietzsche did, but the idea is the same. Some would even argue that I have his philosophy all wrong, that Nietzsche was in fact working for the benefit of mankind, not for exertion of power over it. I believe, however, that Nietzsche considered power to be the driving force of the world, and that a higher being is meant to have three things: absolute power over the mediocre majority; the ability to transgress any law he wishes; and a complete lack of morals, for morals, in his opinion, spell for weakness. Does this sound familiar to anyone?"

"Obviously," said a voice from the back: Vulpe. "It's Voldemort. He was an overman."

Hermione narrowed her eyes. "He _believed _he was an overman. Morals were nothing, power was everything; he did not care for the greater good of wizardkind, despite what you all think. He only cared for power. He most certainly did _not_ care about _any_ of you."

Silence. Hermione could tell she had struck a definite nerve and smiled, fighting to keep a strange sort of cruelty from her voice. "Did I say something wrong? Were you all under the delusion that Voldemort had some special place in his heart for his followers? That his goal was a utopian society in which purebloods reigned supreme? _No._ He wanted a world in which _he_ reigned supreme. In which _you_ would be his followers, his minions even. _All he cared about was power._"

"That's not true, Granger," Malfoy stated abruptly, his voice quietly dangerous as his eyes burned smoky tracks into hers. She remained silent, waiting for him to continue. He sat up in his chair, leaning over the desk and resting his elbows against its surface. Hermione had to force her body not to shiver at the odd look in his eyes, now very dark gray with something she couldn't describe. "You can't possibly understand what the Dark Lord wanted. You never even _met _him—"

"I did," Hermione interrupted plainly, her voice flat. "Continue, please."

"All the same. He wanted a society where people like us," here he motioned broadly around the room, "had control. Where we wouldn't need to worry about half-bloods and mud—muggle-borns corrupting it. It _was_ for the greater good, don't you see? _Our_ greater good."

Hermione began to laugh.

"What are you laughing at?" Malfoy demanded, his lips pursing tightly in annoyance. "Stop laughing!"

Those in the room began to glance at one another uncertainly, wondering if their "teacher" had finally cracked. And then the laughter stopped.

"I have something to show you all," Hermione said quietly after her unexpected outburst. It had been too amusing, how utterly delusional these people were. Silently she reached into her bag and retrieved an ornately carved bowl from which a soft silvery light emanated.

"A pensieve?" Goyle guessed, surprising most of the occupants of the room with his apparent knowledge of the subject.

"Yes," Hermione confirmed, stirring its contents with her wand absently. "What I am going to show you all is a memory from Harry Potter." She ignored the strangled gasp that the majority of the inhabitants of the room emitted. "I don't know if many of you remember the incident during his first year at Hogwarts with the Sorcerer's Stone? Harry encountered Voldemort, face to face, and survived. At the time Voldemort was possessing the old Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher, Professor Quirrell, who was his loyal servant and student of his philosophy."

With a wave of her wand, Hermione signaled the pensieve to do her bidding, and the odd, turbaned figure of her old professor rose from the swirling depths of the pensieve, revolving slowly and repeating the eerie phrase, "_I met him when I traveled around the world. A foolish young man I was then, full of ridiculous ideas about good and evil. Lord Voldemort showed me how wrong I was. There is no good or evil, there is only power, and those too weak to seek it…"_

After several revolutions, Hermione signaled the pensieve to return to its normal state, and let silence reign over the room for several moments before speaking. "There you have it… straight from the mouths of the devoted. The _most_ devoted, perhaps, of them all."

She saw the shocked expressions of her students and smiled gently. "It's difficult, is it not, to see the truth for how it really is? I'm afraid you'll find that sentiment rather common throughout life. Now you see the connection. Dostoevsky is Nietzsche, Nietzsche is Voldemort. You read _Crime and Punishment_ because you needed an introduction, a deliberation on crime and its repercussions, the latter of which we will discuss more next lesson. Oh, and one last thing to consider before class is over:

"Hitler read Nietzsche. He based some of the ideals of the Nazi party on Nietzsche's philosophy."

Hermione's statement was met with blank stares. Finally, Millicent Bulstrode said, "Um… Who's Hitler?"

Hermione shook her head. "Next lesson."

-

"**_I am not a man—I am _dynamite_."_**

_**-- Friedrich Nietzsche**_

-

**Author's Note: **There we have it. I hope this was sufficiently intellectual but not overly so, and _definitely_ not boring. I must say it's nerve-wracking to do a story that requires a lot of research, because I'm afraid I'll get it wrong and some Nietzsche fanatic will get mad at me. So I have to say that the opinion portrayed in this story is not the universal opinion of Nietzsche, and don't let it discourage you from being interested in him. He is _very_ interesting, and I have used the parts of his philosophy that help get my point across, not necessarily the entire picture.

Also, lest I get scads of Dostoevsky/Nietzsche purists yelling at me, I am aware that Crime and Punishment was written before Nietzsche published his works, and that it is likely that neither is based off the other, but I still had to make the obvious connection.

Anyway, that said, I have to ask: is this too boring? I promise that we will get more D/Hr action in later chapters, but you have to remember that they still pretty much hate one another right now. I'm not going to suddenly have Hermione have this inexplicable desire for him when he was _terrible_ to her in school and a bloody Death Eater to boot.

Oooh.. the first part of this chapter was so sad… I was nearly crying when I wrote the first part. Sniff sniff.

Next chapter ought to be interesting… Hitler _did_ in fact, read Nietzsche, and we will see how Hermione connects that to their own five year war. Enjoy your week, and I should post the chapter next weekend.


	5. Stupefy

Chapter: Stupefy

-

"_**Man is the cruelest animal."**_

_**-- Friedrich Nietzsche**_

-

Hermione was alone. Harry and Ginny turned to one another in their grief, clinging together hopelessly. They obviously tried to include her, the one left behind in it all, but she always noticed the strain in their smiles and knew that they would rather be in solitude, protecting one another from everything outside. The Weasley family had become what Hermione thought of as a tightly compacted unit of raw pain, their misery leaving little room for outsiders. Neville was dead. Luna was dead. Lavender had disappeared, as had the Patil twins. _Ron was dead_. The list went on.

Hermione was _alone_.

It was for this reason that she was surprised to hear a knock at her door on Saturday night.

"One moment, please!" She called, hurrying into her room to change into something besides her muggle sleepwear. Finally, breathless, she opened the door to her flat and was shocked into a smile at see a familiar face. "Remus!"

Her old professor looked as tired and peaky as ever, and with a quick calculation in her head Hermione realized that the full moon had only just passed. Trying not to let the sympathy show on her face, she embraced her old friend. He smiled apologetically at her.

"I'm sorry to come so late, Hermione, but I had to see you as soon as I could. I've been busy these past few days, with the moon…" He paused, running a hand through his graying hair, the lines on his face pronounced in his concern. "…and this is as early as I could come. I saw the article in the _Prophet_. What exactly are you doing for the Ministry?"

Hermione felt a swell of joy somewhere in her middle as her loneliness ebbed away for at least a short while. "Come and sit, Remus," she insisted, having forgone his formal title of "professor" years ago, amidst the chaos and battle of war. "I'll tell you all about it after I bring us a cup of tea."

-

Remus Lupin had had a relatively easy time during the war when compared to his fellow Order members. His undercover job with the werewolves had, if nothing else, secured his safety in the times between battles. The loss of so many of the light, however, had taken a toll on his stability, Hermione could see as she examined his stance and features, but that was ordinary for any survivors. Shortly after the conclusion of the war, he and Tonks had wed. Their union had been a welcome relief from the horrors of the aftermath of conflict.

"And you think you're actually getting through to them, then?" Lupin asked mildly during a brief lull in their animated conversation, cradling the nearly untouched mug of tea in his hands as he furrowed his brow in his fretting. Hermione could see very clearly that he did not like the idea of her standing alone in a room full of almost-Death Eaters (or some full-fledged ones, as in Malfoy's case) who had just narrowly escaped Azkaban sentences.

She sighed, staring down at her lap. "It's a bit early to tell, I should think. I've chosen a rather… unorthodox method of teaching. I'm still not entirely sure if it will have any effect."

Lupin gazed pensively at the floor for a moment before speaking, his voice encouraging in his uniquely kind manner. "Take care to remember that the Death Eater's children were, for the most part, sheltered from the goings on in Voldemort's inner circle. Even during the war, their parents still thought they were too young to fully participate. It's my opinion that these offspring didn't establish full devotion to Voldemort, simply because they had never had much contact with him. Of course, they've all grown up hearing of his greatness, but they never truly had a chance to _see_ it before his death. Your students are not Death Eaters." Hermione shot him a doubtful look, a brief flash of a long-forgotten memory surfacing in her mind of a tall, pale boy brandishing his forearm in the dusky light of Borgin & Burkes years ago. Lupin smiled gently as he continued, seeming to understand her misgiving. "Oh, some of them do have the mark, that's something we can be sure of, but they were certainly of Voldemort's lowly ranks, and surely almost never saw him. Voldemort was a secretive man, Hermione; he only regularly graced the presence of his most trusted Death Eaters. Your students only followed orders. I should think that this fact would be of enormous advantage to you. Their fanaticism is only inherited, not created from nothing like their parents' was."

Hermione nodded slowly. She realized that this had not occurred to her; she had simply branded every single one of her students as inherently evil, and thought now that she had been rather silly and scolded herself for pigeonholing every member of her class into one category. She was not ignorant to her own hypocrisy, as well, for she preached maintaining an open mind during her classes but had failed to follow her own instructions. She felt guilt, at that moment, well up within her chest. She resolved to begin her next class with a completely nonpartisan attitude.

She had been to _school_ with the majority of her students and had seen them as innocent children, just as enthralled with Hogwarts as she had been as a muggle-born. She understood now that there was no possible way that Pansy Parkinson, with her girlish flippancy, or Gregory Goyle, stupid and blundering but not particularly malicious, could be completely malevolent beings. Malfoy, on the other hand, had never shown anything but antagonism and hate towards her, his cruelty unrivaled by anyone else in her class; she was not entirely sure that there was any goodness left in him for her to build off of.

"Are any of them giving you much trouble?" Lupin asked, breaking her from her novel reverie.

Hermione remembered a crushing weight pressing into her and angry words like an oath hissed to her face.

"Not particularly."

-

Hermione's students gazed curiously at her magically rigged slide projector at the start of class next Saturday. She smiled faintly at their confusion but remained mute until exactly one o' clock, when she asked a rather odd question to her class:

"Can any of you imagine the sheer multitude of nine million people?"

Understandably, their confusion worsened.

"I don't suppose so," Hermione continued. "Very few people can. If you'll remember the end of last class, Millicent asked me about a name I mentioned in connection with our old friend Nietzsche. Adolf Hitler was that name, and he changed both the Muggle and Wizarding worlds when his power as the leader of Germany intensified circa 1938.

"It is my opinion that every child, of magic descent or not, should learn about what Hitler did. He was a strong leader, that is inarguable, but good morals do not necessarily come hand in hand with good leadership skills. Through the course of his dictatorship, Hitler essentially exterminated more than nine million human beings, the majority of which were Jewish."

Hermione could see in the faces of her students that this abrupt statement of the facts meant very little to them.

_So what?_

"I don't know how familiar you all are with the concept of religion. I am aware that it has much more popularity in the muggle world than in the wizards', but I am reasonably sure that you have heard of Judaism and Christianity and the conflicts between them. Hitler believed that Jewish people were dirt, lower than dogs. He fancied his "race," the Aryans, the Christians, the superior race of the world. Everyone else was useless and had to be eliminated for further success of his people. This has obvious connections to Nietzsche's philosophy, and indeed Hitler respected him so much that he was often painted gazing adoringly at the bust of the philosopher. Although Nietzsche was not anti-Semitic, against Jewish people, Hitler could still transpose his ideas effortlessly to appeal to his own. Hitler's use of Nietzsche as justification for his actions was the most radical use of the philosophy known in history, and its consequences were dire. Because of Hitler, the Jewish population in Europe was decimated. It was genocide.

"Nine million is definitely a large number. Hitler's supporters, the Nazi party, packed Jews in trains and carted them off to concentration camps, where they were starved and outright killed by the hundreds of thousands of thousands." Hermione paused, observing the carefully expressionless countenances of her students. _They still don't_ get _it_.

"Hitler believed himself to be an übermensch, an overman. How many people would Voldemort have been willing to kill? Nine million? More? They both thought themselves overmen, whether consciously or not, no? Do you see the similarities? Hitler, to this day, is hated throughout the world as a racist and mass murderer. How will Voldemort be remembered?"

Silence. Hermione heard someone who she could not identify insist quietly to his neighbor that they were just muggles, so why did it matter? She narrowed her eyes.

"Just muggles, you say?" She asked, her voice very cold.

Her lips set in a thin line, Hermione switched on the projector with a flick of her wand. Bodies piled over bodies, limbs stick-thin and smeared with dirt and other things, appeared as a palpable image on the far wall. She heard several sharp intakes of breath at the horror of the image.

_I knew you were all not so heartless as that._ _I knew_.

Hermione continued to switch through the images each more horrifying than the last. Skeletal forms, seeming more dead than alive, clung to barbed wire fences. The mass graves where those who had gone to the chimneys were dumped. A child. An infant. A grandmother. She saw realization dawn on the faces of those who were less firm, those who were less stubborn.

Hermione did not stop the disturbing onslaught of images as she spoke. "They called this the Holocaust. 'A massive slaughter.' 'Great destruction resulting in extensive loss of life.' I think that any words to describe what happened are useless, but the pictures show all. Is this what it would have been like? Is this what Voldemort would have done to all the 'mudbloods'? All those who were unfortunate enough to be born like me? I don't doubt it. Whether you rejoice in that idea or are secretly repulsed by it, you cannot deny that it is an ugly thing. The victims of the Holocaust were not 'just muggles,' they were children, mothers, fathers,and grandparents. These were people.

"Nine million people is us 225,000 times over. Would Voldemort have gone that far? Of course he would have, and he would have called it success." The images kept coming, and a large number of those in the room were beginning to look disgusted. Malfoy sat stonily, the soft light of the projector reflecting off his pale face. Pansy's cheeks were completely white and she gazed, horrified, at the images of destruction. Vulpe had closed her eyes.

"And it would not have stopped," Hermione declared, and the images changed. Now they moved, and were bright with color. Now, they were images of the casualties of their own five year war. Hermione felt a sick feeling in her chest and her voice was very quiet as she named the deceased as their gruesome pictures flashed on the wall.

"Lisa Turpin. Colin Creevy. Luna Lovegood. Professor Sprout. Cornelius Fudge. Susan Bones. Shall I continue?" Hermione swallowed, her mouth very dry. She kept her face as cool as stone, but she felt like screaming. "Albus Dumbledore." This body was a disturbing parody of the power of their old headmaster when he was alive, the thin limbs tangled in the grass below the Astronomy Tower. Hermione watched as Malfoy jerked abruptly, as if a jolt of raw pain had suddenly shot through his body. She felt as if she could not continue, but pressed on. _I have to._ "G-George Weasley. Bill Weasley. Neville Longbottom. Minerva McGonagall." Hermione blinked repeatedly as the room flooded with a sick hue of red when she switched to the last image. More than several people within the room were looking ill, their faces an unhealthily green. The tears were threatening to spill over her eyes and she raised a hand to her mouth briefly before whispering the last name:

"Ron Weasley."

"Stop! For Merlin's sake, Granger, _stop_!" This was Pansy, her own tears streaming continually down her face in a glaze of moisture.

"The list is very long, everyone," Hermione whispered, for the first time seeming to her class as something weak, incomplete. "Not quite nine million, but it could have been. You can all go."

They all left very quickly, some heading directly to the bathroom, others trudging slowly down the hall, some looking as if this latest display had not affected them in the least. Right now Hermione didn't particularly care.

Once the classroom was completely empty, she sagged. Her shoulders collapsed and shook feebly and she finally allowed an inhuman sound, like a strangled shriek and sob all at once, to escape from her throat.

_Too much._

Her knees unable to support her, Hermione slid down the wall until she was huddled in a tiny ball on the floor. She had tried not to look. Tried not to see the picture before her eyes, the blood and empty expressions that used to be her friends. She couldn't deal with the hate anymore, the looks of utter _indifference_ on some of their faces in the presence of such absolute horrors. It was bringing everything back, all her memories from the past.

Everyone who had told her this would destroy her had been right, she realized. And yet she could do nothing about it, she couldn't stop because it was something she _had_ to do.

The loss exploded violently in her chest and she choked, burying her face in her knees and biting down hard on the cloth-covered skin as she breathed slowly, trying to calm her heartbeat.

"Crying over your boyfriend, Granger?"

Hermione winced and looked up at the tall figure of Malfoy standing before her, her face a glaze of tears and his set in a permanent expression of contempt. But now he was smiling, as if taking perverse pleasure in her grief, a pain so tangible that she felt if he wanted to he could have reached out and touched it.

She was angry with him, then. His complete lack of sympathy, of _humanity_, was going to demolish her if she didn't do something _this instant._

"Shut up! Shut up shut up shut up! _Get out!_" Her voice was high and panicked, and she struggled to rise to her feet, wiping the tears from her cheeks with her sleeve.

Malfoy raised his eyebrows, the lines of his mouth tensing for a reason that Hermione could not understand. But soon the cool mask of unkindness had returned and he chuckled coldly. "No, I won't. Not so strong anymore, are we, Granger? Not so perfect now?" He said, his eyes roaming across her tear-stained face. "No, not perfect at all. _Ugly_, in fact." His voice was almost triumphant, like he was attempting to prove something to himself. Hermione watched him silently, her failure to analyze his cryptic messages a testament to her agitated state. Her chest heaved as she grasped the edge of her desk with fingers salty from her tears. Malfoy continued, his lip rising in a sneer that spurred fury in her head, rendering her vision blurry.

"All this for the Weasel? Honestly, Granger, I would have thought you much more sensible than _this_, crying alone over your dead boyfriend. It's really rather pathetic," drawled Malfoy, looking unimpressed.

Hermione clenched her fists, so angry that she felt as if she were literally seeing red. "You are so _low_, Malfoy. Is it ever enough? You're so insecure that you have to taunt a crying girl to feel good about yourself. _That's_ what is pathetic, you disgusting _animal_. _You don't understand._ You can't understand, not with the cold lump of metal you have for a heart! You will _never_ understand why I'm c-crying right now."

His eyes flashed and he looked for a moment like he would very much like to hit her, but the look disappeared after scarcely a second. "You see, Granger, this is why so many people detest you—"

"That's not—" Hermione began, herpsyche screaming at the unfairness of this declaration.

"—you assume too much." He finished, stepping forward to grasp her shoulder roughly and press her back against her desk with the strength of his one arm. Try as she might, Hermione could not stop her tears, and she realized very suddenly that this was the first time she had cried before another human being since the instant, the very moment of Ron's death, when she had fallen apart. This only caused her to cry more. _Why now? Why in front of_ him

She should have been fighting back, but instead found herself frozen on the spot, tears trembling in her eyes. He was very close to her now, and Hermione felt the irate energy buzzing from him in waves, like a high whine in her ears—or was that her pulse? She couldn't tell and now he was spitting words at her, his whisper hoarse and strained with anger.

"You don't know everything. You don't know _me_. Don't talk about what you don't understand, _Hermione_." He hissed her name like it was a rough curse, and she started under his fingers at the shock of hearing it from his lips.

And then she unfroze.

Malfoy reeled backwards and clapped his hand over his smarting cheek. Hermione stood, rolling her abused shoulder, the look in her eyes fiery and fierce as a starved lion's. Her anger seemed to almost crackle in the air like electricity, and she stood firmly, an imposing figure with her feet spread wide and strong and tears spilling down her cheeks and neck.

Malfoy stared incredulously at her. "You _hit_ me!"

Hermione growled her response low in her throat. "I should have done worse. Don't ever come near me again, or I will send you to Azkaban for much longer than a year. Do you hear me? I don't _care_ what happens to you. I will send you to prison if you touch me again. I know many people who would _demolish_ you for what you've done today."

He rolled his eyes languidly in response to her bold promise, staring at her with a mixture of disgust and something Hermione thought might have been fascination. This frightened her much more than any physical threat. He was silent, regarding her slowly as she narrowed her eyes, the soft brown turning dark and hard with ire.

Then he stepped towards her again. Hermione shouted at him to stop, to leave, and almost told him to stop looking at her. He didn't seem to pay her any notice, and she started to reach for her wand. She aimed it at his chest, preparing to render him unconscious.

_Stupify. Impedimenta. Petrificus Totalus._

She knew the spells. She should have been able to curse him. She just couldn't remember.

"Stop it!"

But he didn't stop, and she fell quiet when he reached up, passing one unforgiving fingertip across her cheekbone. Hermione caught her breath, wanting to shy away and shrink from the contact but unable to do so, her muscles locked in place.

Malfoy's face remained curiously blank as he drew his hand from her face and rubbed his thumb and forefinger together, as if feeling the texture of her tears between his fingers. His eyes were stormy and revealed nothing, although Hermione tried with all of her being to discern something within them. She felt as if every part of her was abnormally sensitive and could distinguish the flow of air in the room, the soft sounds of his breathing as he stared at his fingers.

He broke the silence easily, his voice a near whisper. "Your pain… it's different than most. It's… interesting."

Before Hermione could gather her wits enough to respond, he turned and swept from the room. She allowed herself only a minute to stand and stare at the door, to mull over what had just occurred; strangely, it seemed to scare her much more than anything she had yet encountered during this class.

_Ridiculous._

"Bloody hell!" Hermione cried, turning to gather her books and such into her bag and hitting her hand, palm flat and hard, on the surface of the desk several times to vent her frustration. She didn't understand any of this. Nothing was making sense.

And Malfoy had apparently lost his mind completely.

-

_**"Woman was God's second mistake"**_

_**-- Friedrich Nietzsche**_

-

**Author's Note: **Wow… that's the quickest chapter I've written in a long time. I hope it doesn't suffer, and that I didn't go a bit overboard on the Hitler/Nietzsche/Voldemort references. Umm…

I thank all of the reviewers and wish I could respond individually to each of you, but unfortunately (damn website administrators, or whoever decides the rules on this site!) I'll have to settle with a few of the more urgent responses:

**Eucalyptus**, it was interesting and a coincidence that you mentioned the unrealistic aspects of the last chapter, because I had planned Hermione's conversation with Lupin about that exact subject from the beginning of the story. It just so happened that this was the chapter in which it seemed to fit. And for **I Still Can't Find What Keeps Me Here: **I am a woman, just so you know (you were wonderfully PC about it, though!) :). Several people were a bit concerned with the intellectual content of the last chapter (although the majority of you enjoyed it, or so I am assuming through your reviews), and the fact that the younger readers might not be able to follow it. I totally agree with you; it's tough stuff to grasp sometimes. So if you are younger and having trouble, I apologize profusely. But what can I say? I was _inspired_, I tell you! Hehe. Nothing can curb that damned inspiration, damnit! Anyway, just skip the tough parts and you'll be able to follow the story pretty well. Or just give up. That's what I would do. :)

Hurrah! The first Draco/Hermione…stuff. Kudos for those who can analyze Draco's psyche during this odd moment correctly. More to come.

Last of all, I believe I will be changing the rating to M at some point in the near future. I realized that I was deluding myself when I decided that I would keep it to a T when I first created this story. I just can't sensor things and stay true to the feeling of the story at the same time. If anyone has a problem with this, let me know either by reviews or e-mail and we'll work something out.

Have fun! Friday is tomorrow, remember! I really, _really_ should be studying right now my exam tomorrow. _Really_.


	6. Mess

Chapter: Mess

-

"_**A casual stroll through the lunatic asylum shows that faith does not prove anything."**_

_**-- Friedrich Nietzsche**_

-

Hermione lay awake and thought of the war.

_She runs._

"_Stupefy!"_

_Hermione hears footsteps pounding behind her, their rhythm short and sharp in the resonant halls of the old school. She barely recognizes it now. The place that used to be her sanctuary, her shrine of knowledge, is nothing more than a crumbling castle now, appearing no different than any normal ruin in the Scottish countryside except for the odd-shaped curse scars and scorch marks on its face._

_She points her wand over her shoulder. "Petrificus Totalus!" Someone falls down with a grunt. _

_They fire curses back at her but she weaves haphazardly as she runs and manages to escape them. A jet of green light screams past her head. She runs faster._

_Her breath hurts but she doesn't stop. They are yelling. "It's the Mudblood Granger—the Dark Lord wants her alive! _Don't _use Avada Kedavra, Avery!" A low hiss of warning that sounds like Lucius Malfoy. _

_Saved by a killer, she thinks as her lungs heave._

"_Stupefy! Impedimenta! Stupefy!"_

_They almost hit her with an Imperio and Hermione has had enough. She's _tired. _Tired of running and tired of fighting and angry at being chased. Time is up._

_She stops and turns on her heel, facing her pursuers with a gleam of hysteria in her eyes. _

"_CRUCIO!"_

_The Death Eater she thinks is Lucius Malfoy stops cold, his body seizing in rigid tremors, an eerie series of jerks that looks curiously robotic. The others stop and stare at her. They weren't supposed to use the Unforgivables. _

_She can feel how strong the curse is, and for a moment feels like she shouldn't stop. Let him feel it. _

You killed Luna. You killed _George_. You almost killed Ginny, but you probably don't remember that.

_But Harry's voice sounds in her head and she breaks the connection, breathing hard. Malfoy twitches on the floor, eyes rolling, his words almost incoherent as he tries to speak. _

"_K-Kill he-e-er…" _

_She runs. _

_Finally she takes refuge in what used to be the Potion's dungeon, Snape's old domain. Funny, she thinks, because she thought she heard his voice among the ones chasing her. She falls into one of the old desks, taking comfort in the familiar combination of flat plains and uncomfortable edges. _

_She had used an Unforgivable Curse. _

_She had _liked _using an Unforgivable Curse. _

_She sighs and cradles her head in her hands, hoping that surge of power she felt is not addictive. She stays like that for quite a while, her still-quivering wand resting innocently in her lap. _

_She hadn't known that a wand _trembles _after it is used to cast an Unforgivable. _

_Something bursts through her barricade at the door and stumbles into the room. Hermione jumps from her seat and point her wand at the person, who is holding his arm very close to his body. _

_It is Draco Malfoy, and he is bleeding._

"_Get down on the floor!" She says harshly, shooting warning sparks towards the stone at his feet. He turns around quickly, his eyes narrowing as he sees her. Now she can see his wound. The gash curse has rented the sleeve of his robe and the skin beneath, the long line of red down his forearm stark against his paleness. _

"_Granger…" He breathes dangerously, his wand closed in his fist quicker than she can see._

"_Get _down! _Expelliarmus!" _

_She has the advantage, and he knows it as soon as his wand slips from his bloodied fingers. She catches it deftly and slips it into her robes. Looking very murderous, he obeys her stiffly, crouching into a tightly coiled spring of tension. _

"_What are you doing here?" She askes, her tone shrill._

"_Same thing you are, I should think," he replies simply, motioning towards his arm._

_She finds herself at an impasse. She can't very well arrest him and lead him out through a castle teeming with Death Eaters, but to let him go would be treasonous. He is fumbling with something in his robes, and she yells at him to stop. _

"_I'm only getting a bandage for my arm, Granger. Relax, will you?"_

_He sounds very casual, and it annoys her intensely but she lowers her wand. She watches him as he wraps the torn bit of cloak around his bleeding arm awkwardly and makes no move to help him. He gives her an exasperated, hateful look but stays silent._

_Hermione talks now, to give herself time to think of something to do. "How many people have you killed today, Draco?" She uses his first name purposefully to unnerve him, although it seems to have no effect. _

"_I don't do the killing. We're too young, he says."_

_"Ah… So if your side is defeated in this war maybe not all of you will go to Azkaban, is that it? Maybe some of you can continue the legacy."_

"_Something like that," he mutters, the look on his face hidden. "Are you going to give me my wand back at some point?"_

_She stares, one eyebrow raised as she paces the width of the room, ears trained continuously on any noises from outside their sanctuary. "Why would I do that?"_

_He shrugs, watching her as he rips off the ends of his makeshift bandage with his teeth. "Because you're bloody Hermione Granger. You know what they call you? 'The Good Girl.' That's your name on our side. He wants you alive, you know, and everyone figures it'll be easy, bringing you in. You're the easy one, the good one. You'd never resort to the Unforgivables like your friends Potter and the Weasel. You're not the kind of person to fight dirty," he explains, a self-absorbed sneer gracing his features as he sees her irritated response to his taunting._

"'_The Good Girl,'" she repeats, an ironic half-smile on her face. She remembers that surge of power. "Right."_

_In the end, she lets him go. She gives him back his wand and levitates him fast through the door so that it shatters into rotting-wood splinters and he lands hard on the stone floor. On her way out she walks over his bruised body as he curses her in low groans and she wonders what could have been._

-

Hermione had all but forgotten that brief encounter, for it was practically insignificant in the entire mess of the war in her mind. As the war progressed, the Ministry had gradually become less strict about the use of Unforgivable Curses by non-Aurors, and in the end their side had been delivering nearly as many Cruciatus, Imperius, and Killing Curses as the other.

What could have been.

She had not allowed herself to think much about her other, much more recent encounter with Malfoy. Her stomach felt slightly ill whenever she did allow herself to wonder over it, but she didn't believe it was due to disgust.

And _that_ was why she didn't let herself think about it.

-

"There's a revised edition of _Hogwarts, a History_ out, Hermione," Harry said coyly, hefting the substantial tome in his hands and feigning a toss in her direction. Hermione squeaked and lunged to catch it, frowning disapprovingly when she recognized the feint. She snatched the book from his grasp and began to flip through the pages, entirely absorbed.

Flourish & Blotts was exceptionally crowded. Christmas was approaching—and by approaching, Ginny had so wittily said as they squeezed their way between costumers, they meant two months away—and by the looks of the throng every wizard in Britain would be receiving a book for the holidays. The Harry, Ginny, and Hermione had all agreed to meet in Diagon Alley for a weekend outing between friends, and, as per usual, Hermione had insisted on visiting the expansive bookstore first thing.

"They've added a new section on wards, Harry!" Hermione announced excitedly, her eyes wide as she read.

"Interesting," Harry deadpanned, the greenness of his eyes twinkling.

_He's happy._

Hermione rolled her eyes, watching Harry and Ginny as they grasped hands and went off to find the Quidditch section. She continued to skim through her chosen book until a voice interrupted her.

"I never read that book, I'm afraid; my parents preferred that I went to Durmstrang," Vulpe said, smiling faintly as she leaned against the bookshelf next to Hermione, who started and nearly dropped her book. Vulpe's smile widened apologetically.

"Oh," Hermione said weakly, trying to quell the racing of her heart. She had believed Vulpe to be Bellatrix, only for a moment. "That's a shame. I knew someone from Durmstrang once and he said it wasn't as nice as Hogwarts," she explained bluntly.

Vulpe shrugged. "I wouldn't know." She paused. "Victor, right? I heard him talking about you once."

Nodding, Hermione watched the other woman—girl, rather, for she was very young. "We met during the Tournament." The casual conversation was very unsettling, and Hermione found herself shifting anxiously. They were silent for a moment, Vulpe having picked up a copy of _Hogwarts, a History. _

Hermione studied Vulpe for a substantial length of time as she read, her straight black hair falling over the paleness of her cheeks. She was so like her mother, and yet so different, the spark of madness that had seemed to come hand in hand with Bellatrix noticeably absent from her daughter's eyes. Finally unable to take the silence any longer, Hermione spoke. "Did you need something, Vulpe?"

Vulpe shook her head. "No… not really." She seemed to hesitate, her eyes flitting from one end of the room to the other jumpily. "Um… You knew my parents, right? At least my mother…"

Hermione nodded stiffly, her mouth drawn tight.

Vulpe looked distinctly uncomfortable and her shoulders pulled in on themselves a bit. "Well… would you… would you tell Harry that—Oh Merlin, my mother is rolling about her grave right now. Would you tell Harry that I'm sorry? Mum was always a bit… zealous. She did some terrible things. I know…I know what it's like to lose someone that you love, and I heard Harry was really upset when Sirius died. And all the rest, too," she finished, wincing slightly at the last phrase.

Hermione's mouth had dropped open sometime during this speech and stayed there. "W-What?" She asked eloquently.

Vulpe sighed. "You have to understand that I barely knew my parents. They went to Azkaban when I was about one. I think that Voldemort did some great things—not good," she added, seeing the look on Hermione's face, "but definitely remarkable. I don't agree with the majority of his reasoning, and I've got nothing against muggle-borns or muggles, for that matter. I just… wanted you to know that. At least there's one person in your audience every Saturday who agrees with what you say. I think, though," she added, her eyes mirthful, "that you're getting through to at least some of them."

Hermione nodded numbly, blurting out the only thing she could think of. "Just wondering…who did you stay with while your parents were in Azkaban?"

Vulpe smirked. "Good question. My Aunt Andromeda, mostly. You know, the Black who disgraced the family and married a muggle? I stayed for a bit with Narcissa, as well, but I couldn't stand Lucius. He gave me the willies."

Hermione cracked a wry smile. "I completely understand, believe me. I know your cousin well… I wonder why Tonks never said anything?" She asked, genuinely curious.

Shrugging, Vulpe considered the question. "I never really had that much contact with her, to be honest. I went to a different school and then she was in Auror training."

Hermione thought for a moment, slightly cautious as she voiced her next inquiry. "You… um… You know Draco Malfoy relatively well, then?"

"Yeah."

"Is…Is he all right? He was acting a bit strange after last lesson. Did the war…?"

Vulpe chuckled, running a hand through her hair and pushing it from her face as she replied, "Oh, no. He got off comparatively easy—no mental problems. Or at least, none that he didn't have before the war," she quipped, grinning. "Why do you ask?"

Hermione dropped her eyes, a frown marring her shadowed face. "No reason."

"Hermione? What's going on?"

Hermione spun and caught sight of Harry, his brow furrowed and shoulders stiff as he assessed Vulpe's appearance. Ginny was peering at Vulpe from around Harry's shoulder. Hermione shook her head. "Nothing, Harry."

Vulpe's eyes widened as she saw Harry and she departed hurriedly with a rushed "see you on Saturday."

Ginny watched her go, frowning. "Who was that? She looks like—"

Hermione and Harry interrupted her simultaneously, "It's a long story."

The redhead glared at them. "Fine. I'm going to buy these," she said, motioning towards her impressive stack of Quidditch books and subsequently marching off.

Hermione and Harry stood in silence for a moment, before Hermione said quietly, "She says sorry, Harry, for her mother. She's…sensible."

Harry nodded, the only indication of his surprise one slightly raised eyebrow. "Hmm," he voiced speculatively.

-

Next Saturday Hermione met her students at the main entrance of the Ministry. They looked rather perplexed at the absence of a proper classroom, but Hermione offered no explanation.

She didn't look at Draco, but she could feel him looking at her.

Hurrying to stay on track, she asked brusquely when each student was gathered around her, "How many of you have spent more than fifteen consecutive minutes in Muggle London?"

Vulpe was the only person to raise her hand, and the rest of the group commenced to glare sourly at her. "What?" She asked accusingly, glaring right back.

Hermione tried not to smile. "Good. Please apparate with me to the entrance of the Leaky Cauldron, and we'll go from there."

_This is definitely not an ordinary class,_ she heard someone whisper to his companion, and simply smiled.

-

"_**What is it, is man one of God's blunders or is God one of man's?"**_

_**-- Friedrich Nietzsche**_

-

**Author's Note:** I know, a bit shorter than the rest, but I'm leaving for California for a couple of days to visit my cousin at five in the morning and I wanted to get a chapter out before I left.

Yay Vulpe! Sorry, I just had to get that out.

Thank you to all the reviewers! There were lots! I love you all!

It has just occurred to me that the flashback in the beginning of this chapter could be a decent one-shot… hmm… Anyway, enjoy, and tell me what you think.


	7. Primitive Inclinations

Chapter: Primitive Inclinations

-

"_**There are no facts, only interpretations."**_

_**-- Friedrich Nietzsche**_

-

They walked the streets like children. Their expensive shoes stepped over cracks that would normally have been enchanted to heal instantly and old, browning chewing gum that would have dissolved on impact with the sidewalks in their world.

And they hated it.

Hermione could see this. She could see the sneers of contempt and disgust on their faces, the start when a muggle—one of _those_ despicable creatures…not really human at all, of course—brushed by them. In any other situation she would have found it sinfully amusing, their discomfort, but now she had other things on her mind.

"You're sure about this, then?" Lupin said quietly into her ear as he walked along beside her. She and her group of "students" had met with her old professor and his wife at the Leaky Cauldron, from which they had set off on their little jaunt. Lupin had volunteered for the job of supportive friend and rule-enforcer when she had explained her little plan for a field trip during his last visit to her flat, and Tonks, naturally, had insisted on joining them. The metamorphagus was at the present cheerfully chatting up the menacing-looking Crabbe and Goyle, who both looked rather overwhelmed by her gregarious personality.

Hermione smiled. "Vaguely."

Lupin didn't look very assured.

"Care to tell us, Granger," drawled the surprisingly mild voice of Blaise Zabini from somewhere behind her, "where we're headed?"

Hermione twisted her head over her shoulder as she walked, ignoring an uncomfortable crick. Zabini was directly behind her, watching her with an amused look on his face. "You'll see. Somewhere you've never been, no doubt." She smiled faintly in his direction, but her eyes were on the man, opposite in both color and personality, she had come to discover, beside him.

Malfoy had not said a word. Not once had he spoken during their walk through muggle London, and it was beginning to worry her. Now he was gazing determinedly down at the ground, but she had felt his eyes on her all afternoon.

_What's wrong with him?_

After their disturbing exchange last week, Hermione had seriously begun to consider his mental health. His remarks were so cryptic and obscure that not even she could pick them apart, and appeared entirely random, the work of a touched brain. She resolved to pay closer attention to his moods and appearance.

_For his health._

Right.

She had begun to think just a little bit more about him.

"Hermione, watch out!"

She craned her head back around just in time to see a solid wall of iron-colored something exactly in front of her face. She skidded to a halt so quickly that she fell backwards, managing to avoid a frontal collision but loosing her balance anyway and toppling backwards into Zabini, who caught her round the waist with reflexes she would have to remember to thank his parents for passing on to him.

A bloody light-pole.

Hermione gulped and looked up its long stem, her rate of breath accelerated slightly. She quickly scrambled to her feet, a flush high on her cheeks.

"Are you alright?" Lupin said, concern and a tiny bit of laughter evident in his voice, the same voice that had so fortunately warned her of the obstacle. She scowled.

"Yes, quite." She turned to Zabini, who was unexpectedly grinning at her. "Um… thanks."

He was not the only one laughing at her, albeit behind hands and well-concealed smiles. "'Course," said the dark man, still grinning.

Hermione nodded foolishly, and before she turned to continue on her way she caught sight of Malfoy. Again.

He hadn't so much as _smirked._ Hadn't taunted her, hadn't drawled some cruel quip about her dirty blood affecting her balance. But he _was_, strangely, glaring at Zabini as if he would have liked very much to bash him over the head with something rather heavy and very blunt. Hermione resisted the urge to snatch his wand away from his belt lest he curb his primitive inclination towards something more effective. She could see it shining dark under the gray London sky.

She turned around shakily, stepping with perhaps some grace around the offending pole, deciding to simply ignore what she could not appear to change.

"Right. Onward, please!"

-

"What the bloody hell is a museum?" Asked Flint resignedly, gazing up at the grand building before them as it dwarfed their little group of mostly petulant wizards against its massiveness. The fountain of Trafalgar Square was gurgling placidly behind them, the famous pigeons a faint warble against its noise.

"I suppose it depends on what sort of museum it is. This one is called The National Gallery, and holds within it everything from paintings to sculpture. I guess you could say that it's a collection of some of the finest achievements of muggles in art. Wizards, unfortunately, find art to be of less practical use, and therefore it's at least one subject that muggles have managed to outmatch us in, I'm afraid," Hermione explained with not a small amount of sarcasm in her tone and a wry smile coloring her lips as she heard several snorts of disbelief.

"As of now I'm turning you all loose. All I ask is that you be respectful of muggle customs and, not to mention, art. If I hear of obstreperousness of any kind the ministry will be informed, if you catch my drift. The majority of these paintings are worth more than any of your belongings combined. Yes," she added as an afterthought, seeing Malfoy's raised eyebrow, "even _yours_, Malfoy. And _please_ don't be so idiotic as to try and steal one; even the ministry won't be able to help you if you do. Oh, and please return to this area in two hours, and we'll make our way back to the Leaky Cauldron. Go on," she said, seeing their blank looks, "entrance is free."

They wandered up the marble steps slowly, cautiously, as if their legs refused to work. Lupin and Tonks came to stand next to her, each chortling merrily.

"Like lost puppies, they are," Tonks observed, flicking a strand of her hair from her eyes. Bright orange today.

"Indeed," concurred Lupin, grinning despite himself. "Well done, Hermione."

She cracked a smile.

-

She wandered aimlessly around the grandiose halls of the museum, stopping every once in a while to observe a favorite painting or something of the like. She visited old friends: Da Vinci's "The Virgin on the Rocks", Van Gogh's "Sunflowers", Botticelli's "Venus and Mars", Vermeer's "A Young Woman Standing at a Virginal", Veláquez's "The Rokeby Venus". Each made her smile and remember a time when things were simpler, when her parents brought her here. First, when she was six, and later many times more.

"_This one's pretty, Daddy."_

"'_Madonna of the Pinks', by Raphael."_

"_Ra… Raf…"_

"_Raph-a-el."_

"_The baby's naked."_

"_Yes, it is, darling."_

Hermione found herself drifting aimlessly, her eyes unfocused and recalling images and memories that she ought not to have remembered, how insignificant they were.

"_Mum, look at his use of color."_

"_Mhmm. Fantastic, isn't it?"_

"_The sky's so blue, and the detail in the red cloth!"_

"_I told you."_

She felt her eyes tear and rubbed at themfuriously.

_Stop it._

_Familiar bodies on the familiar grass. Someone's arms around her and tears._

_STOP IT._

She stopped it, and continued on her way, eyes dry.

-

She saw them clustered around a Monet, fascinated despite themselves at his skill with layers of paint and color. She saw them in the café, sitting with a glass of water because they had no muggle money to buy food. She saw them parked morosely on a bench, among the ancient Greek sculptures, wandering about the Goyas and Cézannes and Rubens. It was enough to make her laugh.

She found _him_ in front of "A Woman Bathing in a Stream". He was standing very close to the priceless Rembrandt, brows furrowed in either concentration or revulsion; she couldn't tell. She felt a kind of tight sensation in her throat and hurried on, intending to pass him without so much as a word. But that was before she saw him start to _touch_.

Lunging forward, she slapped his hand away from the gleaming surface of the painting quickly. "Jesus, Malfoy!" She exclaimed, the muggle expression slipping easily from her lips in her distress. "Don't _touch_ it!"

He glared at her immediately, stepping away from the painting only slightly. "Why not?"

"You'll ruin it!" She cried, inwardly wondering why she was so exasperated over something so trivial as a simple mistake. They lapsed into a tense silence, Hermione having not the courage to either move or start up a conversation. Malfoy seemed intent on ignoring her, but felt the tension around him nevertheless. She discovered that her fear of any physical harm delivered by him had dissipated, for the most part, with his odd behavior last week. After his soft whisper—

_It's…interesting._

—she didn't think he would hurt her. Not physically.

No, the fear that was making her heart beat like a thump in her chest was due to something else altogether.

"It was his mistress, you know," she finally blurted, flushing slightly.

Malfoy looked at her sharply through a veil of light hair, clearly confused.

"The painting. Rembrandt painted his mistress. I can't remember her name, but it's something long and difficult to pronounce," she said, offering a shaky smile. Strangely, his sudden change in behavior prompted her to attempt a truce rather than back away.

"Ah." It was but a deep rumble, and he turned back to studying the painting.

Hermione had long ago decided that there was something distinctly _sexy_ about this painting. The woman's eyes were angled downwards, as if examining her own legs as she stepped daintily into the stream. Her shift, hiked almost up to the juncture of her thighs as she bathed, was low enough that it nearly exposed her complete left breast. It was a painting about seduction and desire, _almosts_ and _nearlys_.

Hermione looked sideways at Malfoy to see that his eyes were unfocused, obviously paying little attention to the merits of the image before him. Giving herself no time to falter, she spoke. "Um…You're quite all right, Malfoy?"

She heard a long sigh exhaled beside her, before he replied slowly, all traces of malice having for some reason disappeared. "Of course." It was neither friendly nor cruel by any means, but rather…_empty._

She turned her head immediately, regarding him with unease written clearly across her face. She then saw him visibly tense, his lips drawing downwards in a scowl. Quite suddenly his demeanor changed and he turned on her, his eyes severely intense on hers and _angry_. "Why the fuck to you care, Granger? What could _possibly_ cause you to wonder, hmm?"

She recoiled at once, immensely taken aback. "I just _thought_—"

"You just thought that the poor pureblood who's lost _everything_ was doing poorly? That _something_ was making him behave oddly? Take three fucking guesses, Granger." He was breathing hard, each puff of air washing over her skin in a manner that would have been pleasant under a different situation. His voice had risen enough so that people in their vicinity were shooting them annoyed looks. She found herself curiously unafraid despite the wild look in his eyes as he stared down at her.

"Don't you _dare_ try and make out that your problems are worse than everyone else's, you selfish prick. You have everything you could ever want, and yet you still want more. You don't even know the meaning of the word 'loss,' so don't attempt to magnify your problems into something worth getting upset over, when some people have _really_ lost everything during the war." She said this all very quickly in a whisper, her consonants hissing through her teeth in her frustration.

Surprisingly, he quieted. His brow smoothed and his eyes went cool once more. "I wasn't talking about the war," he explained, and turned on his heel to stride away.

Hermione stared, aggravated, after him, before turning as well and catching sight of Vulpe, who was standing some distance away with the look of someone highly entertained. Hermione glared at her. "Any hints, maybe?" She asked, leveling her question at the girl.

Vulpe chuckled. "Hermione, for someone so smart you can be a bit thick sometimes."

This did not help Hermione's confusion at all, and with an exasperated huff she turned and headed towards the main entrance of the museum. Their two hours were almost up.

-

"You took them to a _museum_?" Harry asked the next day, loudly enough so that both Ginny and Hermione shushed him. He then promptly burst into peals of raucous laughter.

Hermione cautioned a glance around the dreary interior of the well-known wizarding pub. The Leaky Cauldron had been the only edifice in Diagon Alley that had suffered little harm during the war, and had stubbornly remained open throughout the entirety of those five years. It was a regular lunch spot for the trio of friends.

After seeing that Harry had not drawn much attention towards them, Hermione turned to answer him. "Yes, I did. I actually think some of them might have enjoyed it, in fact," she said, with a slight smile on her face.

"Really?" Ginny exclaimed, grinning as well. "Should've invited me!"

"Remus and Tonks took up all available positions, Gin, sorry. They had the time of their lives."

Ginny pouted cutely, but Hermione ignored her and made quick work of the rest of her lunch. "Where's the fire, 'Mione?" Harry asked, referring to her haste.

"I have to make a stop and the apothecary…run out of powdered moonstone."

"Indulging in Draught of Peace again?" Harry's tone was light, but as Hermione looked up from the remains of her lunch she caught a strained expression on his face.

_Don't worry for me._

After the war Hermione had indeed been regularly brewing the Drought of Peace to calm her anxieties and dull her grief. She had gradually weaned herself off of the potion several months ago, unwilling to become addicted to its effects, but liked to have a small stock available lest everything…pile up on her. She shook her head to satisfy her friends.

"Not for some months, Harry. You know that. Oh, by the way…did you by chance talk to the minister and finish the preparations for the next lesson? I know it's a stretch, but I think it will be worthwhile."

Harry nodded. "Scrimgeour was a bit confused, but I convinced him it was for the best. He's provided you with three guides. It's fortunate that all the Dementors have left, or else he would have never allowed it."

"Thanks, Harry. You're a dear." She fished several sickles from her bag and dropped them on the sticky table beside her now empty plate. "Now I've got to run…see you." And, bestowing a kiss to each of their cheeks, she went out to the cobbled street of Diagon Alley.

-

She saw Malfoy through the window and nearly turned right around and went back to the Leaky Cauldron. She didn't feel up to another conflict today. It was only her strength of character and determination to not let her plans be interrupted by him that prevented her from leaving. Perhaps he wouldn't see her. She stood behind him in line, foot tapping, head swimming for some reason she could not identify, let alone attempt to banish. He didn't appear to notice her, and she was not about to announce her presence. She heard his order only in mumbles, his voice was so low. She resolved not to be curious.

After receiving his enclosed package of goods he turned so abruptly that Hermione's nose was nearly touching his chest. She let out an uncivilized yelp and jumped back quickly. He gazed at her with an air of surprise, his eyes wide, and stood there, just…watching her.

"Er…hello," she said lamely. She forgot to be annoyed, forgot yesterday's anger. "Sorry," she added, as if on reflection, for the invasion of his space.

He waved a hand at her dismissively and finally turned his eyes away. He seemed determined not to speak, and started to stride quickly from the store, resolutely averting his face from hers. It seemed their disinclination for conflict was mutual today, and Hermione found that confusing. Again.

Just as he was about to reach the door, Hermione called out. "Malfoy!"

He sighed and turned towards her, irritation clearly evident in his tone as he snapped, "What?"

"Um…next week's lesson is going to be a bit hard. So come prepared, will you? Just…be ready for something difficult." She didn't know why she said it. Maybe she thought he deserved a warning.

She imagined maybe he knew. Maybe he could see it in her eyes, but he just nodded and said the first mildly sociable thing he had ever said to her: "Thanks." And then he left.

She had not missed the way his fists clenched when he saw her, so surprisingly close to him.

-

**_"For believe me: the secret for harvesting from existence the greatest fruitfulness and greatest enjoyment is—to live dangerously."_**

**_-- Friedrich Nietzsche_**

-

**Author's Note**: It's been awhile, hasn't it? I try to get at least a chapter a week done, but it simply wasn't possible these past two weeks for reasons that are far to boring to share. Anyway, I hope this makes up for it. Thanks so much to all my lovely reviewers, and enjoy and tell me what you think, as always.


	8. Towards the Dark

Chapter: Towards the Dark

-

"_**All truth is simple…is that not doubly a lie?"**_

_**-- Friedrich Nietzsche**_

-

She remembered the story went like this:

They appeared, and hazy lines of blurry bodies became solid. It was dark and they could hear the black sea crashing against the rock precipice of the shore. A mist hung low in the air, masking the dim light that emanated forebodingly from a fortress in the distance.

Someone recognized. She had not told them where they were going, but they knew now. "No… fucking hell," a familiar male voice breathed, and Hermione saw a pale hand reach for the portkey they had arrived by. But she had already enchanted it to fail.

_He would recognize it, wouldn't he?_

She shot Malfoy a hard look. _I warned you. _His hand dropped away.

They looked panicked, their faces a white glow amidst the shrouding darkness. Hermione spoke quietly.

"I've brought you here so you can _know_. There's nothing glamorous about punishment, there's no bright light of forgiveness because _you did what you thought was right._ There's only loneliness and madness and one day death. This is Azkaban, and you can see there's nothing here but the cold."

They seemed to step back collectively, one single terrified motion that reflected the expression on their faces. More hands reached for the portkey only to find it ineffective. Even Vulpe looked horrified, and her dark eyes wandered instinctively to the crumbling edifice on the hill. Hermione wondered how she would _feel, _knowing that Bellatrix and Rodolphus had survived there. The past tense of that thought reminded her that Vulpe's parents had been executed after the war, a barbaric practice that Hermione would have vehemently opposed were it anyone else.

Malfoy stood straight, his face blank. His father had not been disposed of in the same way.

"I'm not going. You can't make me," whispered Montague, his eyes very wide. "I don't care what you do, Granger, but I'm not going in there."

Hermione looked at him sadly, but she had resolved not to push them. This was something they had to do willingly, and if someone said they didn't want to go, they wouldn't have to—now. "I'll have to inform the Ministry."

"I don't care."

"You'll be removed from the class. You'll probably have to go on trial."

"I don't care."

"Okay." She retrieved a portkeyed coin from her pocket and activated it as she handed it too him. He disappeared immediately.

After that Pucey and Warrington said they wouldn't go either. Then Bletchly, Higgs, and Daphne. She gave them all coins without argument. When they left it was very quiet.

"Miss Granger?"

Startled and jumpy in her disturbing surroundings, Hermione spun around immediately to see three hulking men, their faces shadowed with horrors both seen and done; they were the guards of Azkaban, and her guides. "Yes?" she answered, surprised to find her voice steady.

"Ah'm Owen, an' this is 'Enry an' Pete," the smallest of the three main said with a thick accent that Hermione had trouble placing, motioning to each of his companions as he introduced them. "We're yer guides."

"Ah…" Hermione said, sticking her hand out politely. They shook it carefully, as if afraid the bones in her hand would break. She smiled. "Shall we begin? We want the full tour."

She glanced briefly over her shoulder as the three men led them up the rocky shore, the colossal fortress looming over them, to see that her students most definitely did not agree with her.

They walked in silence, but heard the screams of prisoners as they approached. The building before them seemed to hum with magic, and Hermione could sense the securest wards in the known world flex and give as they entered the premises. She couldn't tell if the prickling at the back of her neck was due to them or something else. The darkness seemed somehow inherently evil.

The structure of the fortress was build for purpose rather than aesthetics. It was large and blocky, obviously having been renovated many times over to increase its capability. The most recent section to have been rebuilt was composed entirely of magically constructed metal, the strongest in the world, which had been bound seamlessly to the stone surrounding it. Hermione shivered, remembering the day of the mass breakout from Azkaban when that whole side of the prison had been blasted away using muggle explosives. Something _muggle_, Hermione thought ironically. Something they hated. The prison had soon after been modified to protect against muggle weapons as well as wizard. The building was enormous; it was only one story, but sprawled across the area of the island impressively. They had had to add to its many corridors and hallways after The Last Battle. There had been too many prisoners.

She doubted that any light ever permeated through the clouds covering the island, much less into the prison.

And it was _cold._ There were no dementors now, but it was entirely void of heat.

Hermione glanced behind her as they approached the threateningly bolted doors and saw that every single one of her charges was shivering and frightened. She had come prepared and began to pull on a heavy parka, but thought better of it and handed the garment to Pansy, who looked as if she were going to either faint or vomit from fear and exposure. Pansy looked rather amazed but nodded reluctantly in thanks.

Owen, Henry, and Pete were working at the locks on the door; there were an amazing number of them, and it took quite a long time. Finally, the door loosened with a low, sharp sound and creaked open. Hermione heard a whimper behind her.

"Welcome t' Azkaban," said Owen flatly, and it felt more like a condemnation than reception. They walked into the gloom, and heard the cries of the damned amidst the sounds of their hollow footsteps.

-

The prisoners' cells were disturbingly small, maybe five paces wall to wall. There were no bars, and the "door" was enchanted to look identical to the other three sides of the room from the inside. From the outside, they could see everything. She supposed it was a standard safety measure, but it was horrifying nonetheless.

It wasn't a cell, it was a box.

"They can hear us, but they can't see us," informed Henry, his face empty of all expression. When any guard joins the group of us, they lock him in an unused cell for a day or two so he can see what it's like." And then his face cracked, a shadow crossing over his eyes. "It's torture. They made it worse after the Dementors left. Brought some expert enchanter here and he waved his wand and all the cells shrunk and the walls closed in and changed and everything's so _dark_ now."

Hermione nodded slowly and remained silent.

She made herself look into the cells, so that her class would follow her example. Most of the prisoners looked like a heap of rags and flesh, motionless in a corner of their cell. Some were naked, sprawled on the cold floor, their sunken chests moving only slightly. Many raved and paced across their room, talking to invisible people around them and gesturing madly. Some screamed until their voices left them. Some were crying.

Pansy finally fainted, and Pete picked her up and carried her until she revived. Vulpe looked as pale as Hermione had ever seen her and she walked with her eyes determinedly set on the floor, wincing as she heard the prisoners rant and scream and cry. Blaise was trying and failing to keep his face blank. And Malfoy… Malfoy looked as if he would die.

Hermione felt tears begin to spill down her cheeks and did nothing to stop them. She wanted to reach out, to touch and let him know that _someone_ was there. He looked like he didn't know that anything existed except for the prisoners in the cells and the high, bitter walls around them.

Hermione shook her head and turned back to the prisoners and the tears did not cease. She saw a familiar face within a cell and stopped walking abruptly. "Oh… Nott," she breathed, and every single one of her students' heads snapped towards her, and then to the prisoner that sat bundled in the corner of the cell before them.

Theodore Nott had been the most malicious and involved Death Eater of their generation. His wealth and persuasiveness had not saved him from a life sentence, unlike most of her students. She saw them recoil with the realization that this could have been any one of them. They could all have been in Nott's place.

"Let's keep going," Hermione said quietly. "Come _on._" She felt pity, now, for them.

They went on, walking through the winding tunnels and corridors of the prison slowly. They went for what seemed like hours in silence, until she heard a memorable voice. A cultured accent, a smooth, slippery tone. An evil lilt. _No._

She grabbed Owen's arm. "Let's turn back now. Please…" She said fervently, whispering as she glanced back towards Malfoy, whose face had gone very white.

The guard looked back at her, confused. "There's no other way out, Miss Granger, if you want t' keep on th' safest route."

"What?" She said loudly, a bit panicked. In a lower voice she continued, "I told the Ministry—"

"…Narcissa, I _told_ the house elves that I wanted my robes impeccably pressed, and…"

Hermione stopped talking immediately and swept around to Malfoy. His mouth was pressed into a thin line and he seemed to be moving as if on mechanics. "You don't have to, Malfoy. You can—"

"…Hogwarts' _fool_ Albus…"

"—stop and wait. You don't have to do this," Hermione finished quickly, grasping his shoulder as he refused to look at her with eyes so blank that she was frightened.

"…Dark Lord wants us all there by nine o' clock, Draco. What do you propose I tell him, hmm? That you're simply too _lazy_…"

Malfoy turned his eyes finally to hers, looking down at her with a sudden blaze of loathing dancing in his gray irises. "Did you or did you not hear the guard, Hermione? I have to…"

He trailed off as they rounded the corner. Hermione, still shocked by his use of her first name, had not prepared herself.

Lucius Malfoy was a shadow of his old self. His hair, once of the sort that Hermione would have considered beautiful if it had belonged to any other person, was so caked with grime that it looked black. His impressive bearing and form had disintegrated and he now looked nearly skeletal. His eyes were wide and appeared alert, but if one were to look directly into their depths one would see the madness coloring his face. He was one of the ones who raved. He had conversations with people no one else could see, and walked frantically around his cell, head jerking every which way as he talked.

"Darling 'Cissa, you know Draco must do this…No! I'm sorry, my lord…yes, I understand. Wait, Dobby, what did I tell you? The pictures are to be straightened just so. It will be clothes the next time you disobey me. Out of my sight!" And here his voice turned low and sinister. "Draco, what did I say would happen if you failed? You knew that Azkaban was to be broken out of soon after the completion of your task. Did you think that I would not find you? You forget, son, that Severus is far more loyal to me than to yourself…Yes, of course, he must be punished. Wormtail, I have never met such an incompetent being as you. The Dark Lord will hear of this, I can assure you… wants her alive! _Don't_ use Avada Kedavra, Avery! Disobey me…"

And it went on, Lucius's broken mind jumping from one point in his life to another. Hermione trained her eyes on Malfoy, who had stopped walking and stared, horrified, at this shell of his father.

"Let's go," Hermione said loudly over the yells and refined conversation of the elder Malfoy, but no one was listening.

Draco stepped back until his shoulders were touching the opposite wall of the corridor, his face entirely bloodless. Hermione saw the sheen of sweat on his forehead and upper lip and didn't fail to notice the way his hands shook as he clenched and unclenched them.

"Father?" He said in a very small voice, sounding so much like his younger self that Hermione jumped forward and stood in front of him, attempting to block his view of the raving man despite her inferior height.

The constant stream of conversation halted immediately, and Lucius Malfoy turned his head very slowly towards the sound of a voice he apparently recognized. His nostrils dilated as he sniffed the air once, and then again, as if he could smell, in some perversely serpentine way, the presence of his son. "My lord, it appears we have a visitor. Yes, my wayward son, for whom I feel I must once more apologize. He has been punished accordingly for his grievous ineptitude, I assure you. Yes, yes…the most severe for a member of my family, of course." A pause. "As always, my lord, you have displayed impressive insight and intelligence to have guessed such a conclusion. Draco is no longer part of the Malfoy line. He is disowned, and will fight under you as a member of the lowest rank of Death Eaters possible. Of course, such a fate will surely…"

Draco had closed his eyes during his father's deranged soliloquy and was now leaning the majority of his body weight against the wall. Hermione did not doubt that he, like his father, was reliving that night that must have ended in such pain. And then, seeing Draco's expression as Lucius continued to speak of him, she had had enough. Not knowing what else to do, she whirled towards the rambling prisoner and pressed herself against the invisible barrier between the corridor and the cell.

"_SHUT UP, LUCIUS!_"

Her voice rang out clearly above the steady stream of noise from the prisoners. Lucius stopped talking at once, his mouth clamping down tightly as he stared at what he saw as a screaming stone wall with something that looked almost like fear. He abruptly backed into the opposite border of his cell and sank down into a huddled ball, drawing his knees up to his chest and remaining silent.

Hermione, breathing hard, turned around to find everyone staring at her. She ignored this, and stalked up to Draco, who had not moved. His eyes were still closed.

"Malfoy." She tried again. "Malfoy. _Draco_."

His eyes snapped open and focused on her. Hermione, both fascinated and horrified, tried not to gaze at the pain in them. Dropping her face towards the ground, she curtly said, "Come on, then," and walked on.

-

Hermione watched blankly as the last group of students touched the portkey and disappeared, seeming to meld into the murky shadows around them. She would not return, not yet. She had something she needed to do.

"You're going to see Severus, aren't you?"

She jumped, starting so violently that she nearly fell over. Malfoy shot out his hand and grasped her wrist, righting her and letting go very quickly afterwards. Hermione nodded silently, rubbing the skin that ached where he had touched. He had a strong grip. "I thought you left."

He shook his head, his attention trained on the ground. When he raised his head again Hermione saw a very fierce look in his eyes. "I _hate_ you," he said quietly, his voice low and faintly ragged. She saw an expression she was vastly familiar with on his face; it was the same look that Harry had had after a monumental battle during the war, the look that Mrs. Weasley had when she set the three empty places at the dinner table every night. She recognized it from the mirror when she picked up Ron's old shirt and remembered. "I can't believe…" And here he trailed off, his gaze focused entirely on her. He was not violent, and she did not feel threatened. He was simply angry and sad all at once, and it was raw and painful to see. She had never before imagined a Draco Malfoy like this.

It was very, very cold.

Hermione felt like crying again. "I know, Draco." Sometime inside the prison she had begun to think of him as something other than just Malfoy, and his first name slipped out with surprising ease. She decided to ignore this. "I'm so…" Her throat stopped, and she waited a moment before continuing. "I'm sorry. I tried to stop it, I really did. I didn't mean…" She didn't know what else to say.

He turned his face away from her and stared for some time out into the roiling sea. Hermione, for want of anything more adequate to do, set the last portkey on the ground and silently made her way back to the last place she wanted to be on earth. Owen was waiting for her at the entrance of the prison.

She had to see her old Professor because she had to know _why._ He had been imprisoned literally as soon as the Aurors had caught him. The Ministry had, in the midst of the war when everything seemed to be lost, decided do revoke the right to a fair trial for the truly "dark ones," something Hermione opposed even to this day despite her activity in the war. Snape hadn't had even a chance to argue his case. But Hermione had no sympathy for him. She needed to know _why_ he had betrayed someone who had helped him so much and _why_ he had not killed Harry when he had the chance and there were so many questions that she could barely keep track of them in her head. What she needed was _closure_.

"I'm coming with you," a hoarse voice behind her said. Hermione stopped walking and sighed.

"No, you're not. You need to get away from this place."

"Shut the fuck up, Granger."

"Okay."

-

She didn't ask him anything as they walked through the winding, claustrophobic halls of the prison again, and he didn't offer to explain. She could guess herself why he wanted to come.

He was guilty and he was angry and he was tired of not knowing.

The silence felt awkward so she spoke, finally, her voice seeming very soft amidst the noise of the prisoners. "Do you still dream? Of the war, I mean? Harry told me about what happened that night, during our sixth year. Did you—"

"I don't want to talk about that."

Hermione looked up at him, surprised by the flatness of his tone, and found him to be staring straight ahead at Owen's back but not really _seeing._ She didn't say anything more after that.

Snape was not one to rave and blather, and Hermione was infinitely glad. She could not have dealt with her old potions professor repeating ingredients to insolent first years who were not really there or sucking up to a nonexistent Dark Lord. He simply sat, sallow face blank, silent.

Draco, surprisingly, was the first to speak. "Severus?"

Snape seemed to shake himself out of a stupor and turned his head slowly, as if his neck was very stiff, towards the source of the familiar voice.

Hermione tried now. "Professor?" She was shocked to discover how much her questioning tone sounded like herself at fifteen, asking her teacher a question about the properties of boomslang skin.

Snape sat up, his eyes now very awake. "Draco?"

Draco's face went hard. "Yes. You're lucid?"

Something in her old professor's face twitched, and he blinked twice before speaking. "More or less. What…What are you doing here?"

"Granger has questions. I want to listen."

"Granger?" Snape said distantly, as if trying to drudge up memories of a past life, which Hermione supposed was more or less an accurate presumption.

Hermione glanced at Draco sharply. She doubted very much that he wanted simply to listen to a conversation, but continued nonetheless. "Yes…" she intoned nervously. "You remember me? Harry Potter's friend?"

"Ah… The sensible one."

She stepped back instinctively, surprised by the first compliment she had ever received from the surly professor. _Ex_-professor, she reminded herself. She was also surprised by how _sane_ he seemed; it was unnerving in a place like this. "Er…yes. I have some questions."

"You always have," Snape replied after several moments, as if considering the sound of her voice.

"Why did you betray Dumbledore? He helped you…saved you from Azkaban before. Why hurt him?" Once she began, she could not stop the questions from tumbling disorderedly from her lips.

"Betray?" Snape said, chuckling darkly. "That's what they all said, wasn't it?"

"You did!" Hermione said in a tone louder than she intended, somewhat angry now. She felt rather than saw Draco shift beside her.

"No, never betray. You should learn, girl, the signs of legilimency. Or Harry Potter should. He was never very good at any of those sorts of things, was he? No, never betray. Never."

Hermione glanced at Draco, who looked only slightly less confused than she felt. "Right," she persisted. "Why didn't you kill Harry, if you were always secretly loyal to Voldemort?"

"You don't listen," Snape said immediately, before seeming to revert into something else entirely unlike his previous attitude. "Dumbledore _said,_ he said so." Hermione was horrified to hear her old professor's voice break and waver unsteadily.

Hermione saw in her peripheral vision Draco press the flats of his hands against the invisible wall between them, and heard him speak with such vehemence that she nearly withdrew from his side. "_Why _did you perform the Unbreakable Vow? How could it have _possibly_ helped you?"

"You two aren't _listening_. I had to…had to keep up the arrangement. Had to look _perfect._ Had to _help_…had to…"

And after that he said no more things of use to anyone but himself.

-

They appeared together inside the empty Ministry classroom, the other students having long since departed. They were both very shaken, but Draco more so, Hermione thought.

He leaned against one of the desks because it looked as if his legs would not support him. He was pale and trembling from the aftereffects of that place, that torture that had claimed everything he knew.

Hermione needed to escape. "I-I'll see you next week," she blurted lamely, and began to rush from the room. And then he looked at her.

He was lost. Something was destroyed completely inside. His hair hung over his haunted eyes with a shallow curve that echoed the worn arc of his spine. She could see the shallow rise and fall of his shoulders, far too fast.

_Too fast_.

She didn't feel her legs move, but she was before him in an instant. He gazed silently at her, his face tilted slightly downwards as if hiding. She said the only thing that seemed appropriate.

"I warned you."

She saw the muscles in his jaw flicker and move. "No, you didn't. You didn't tell me _anything_," he ground out, and then she moved her hand to his cheek and rested it there, her fingers smoothing the lines over his angular cheekbones and at the corners of his eyes. His eyelids fluttered closed, and he released a long breath of air.

She let the warmth of her hand flow into him, and when she saw that it was not enough she moved closer and rose on the tips of her toes and took him in her arms.

He was stiff for a moment, tension knotting his muscles, but then he folded into her and clung, his face pressed tight to her neck. She whispered to him, told him it was _okay,_ and apparated to her flat.

-

She set him up on her couch and he fell asleep immediately without removing his shoes. She left them on, unwilling to involve herself further, and then went into her room, locking the door behind her.

She had had to do it. She didn't want to think about what he would have done if she had left him alone. He was broken, now.

_She_ had broken him.

Hermione stared at herself in the mirror above her armoire until a tear trailed down her cheek and hated herself, then.

When she woke up in the morning he had gone away.

She remembered the story went like this, and that it was the beginning of something.

-

**_"One has to pay dearly for immortality; one has to die several times while one is still alive."_**

**_-- Friedrich Nietzsche_**

-

**Author's Note**: That, I think, is the best chapter yet of this fic. Either that or I'm hopelessly misguided.

Oh, but _what_ fun to write!

Of course we get a bit more insight into everyone's character when troubled times rear their ugly heads. Poor, lovely Draco. I hope it was to your liking. Azkaban is one creepy place, and that's all I have to say about that.

There's not too much left, I think. Maybe a few more chapters, unless I can think of something else I want to do. I may do a sequel, but I'd have to be inspired.

As always, cookies and cheesecake and chocolate tortes (we had 25 people over last night and those were the desserts…mmm…) for all my reviewers. There are so many more of you than I am used to! It's delightful! I'm happy that this is something moderately popular. Remember the cookies and cheesecake and chocolate tortes, people, and remember to review!


	9. Something Broken

Chapter: Something Broken

-

_**"Perhaps I know best why it is man alone who laughs: he alone suffers so deeply that he had to invent laughter."**_

_**-- Friedrich Nietzsche**_

-

**Caution**: There's some unpleasant language later in this chapter, but probably nothing you haven't heard before. I'm resisting as much as I can to keep from changing it to an "M" rating. If anyone has problems with the content, tell me so and I will change it immediately. I kind of feel like a lot of my fics are rated mature, so I'm trying to keep this one not so scandalous so more people can enjoy it.

-

"You did _what_?"

Hermione stared at the floor. "I took Draco Malfoy to my flat and he slept on my couch and then he left."

Ginny laughed dryly and threw her hands up into the air, eyes directed skyward as if supplicating the heavens for anything in the same _vicinity_ as sanity. "Of course you did," she sighed.

"Well it sounds worse when you make me say it like that!" Hermione exclaimed, defending herself lamely. "You should have seen him, Ginny. He…" She trailed off, her eyes darkening as she remembered the previous night.

_He was lost. Something was destroyed completely inside. _

She continued softly, shaking her head as if she were physically capable of expelling the thought from her memory. "You would have done the same thing."

"It's _Malfoy_."

"I know."

"It's Draco bloody _Malfoy_, Hermione. Remember him? The smarmy bloke who introduced you to a charming little term starting with 'M' and who taunted you and made you cry in school? The disgusting little ferret who was recruited by his Death Eater friends to kill Dumbledore, the shining leader of the Light?" By now the redhead was growing a bit hysterical, and Hermione actually heard her take a deep breath before resuming her tirade in a somewhat quieter tone. "I can't believed you helped him."

Hermione curled her legs into her chest where she sat in Ginny's plushy armchair, resting her chin on her knees. "Gin, I don't know what he would have done if I'd left him. The poor man had just seen his criminal, mad-as-a-hatter father for the first time in who knows how long."

"_So?_"

"I couldn't…" Hermione struggled, both trying and failing to put into words the complexity of her sentiments. "I just couldn't."

Ginny stared at her blankly, an accusatory air to her expression.

Hermione huffed her exasperation, ramming her forehead into her knees and talking quickly into the worn denim of her muggle jeans. "Well I'm _sorry_ if I'm just a little too sympathetic sometimes! He looked so… broken. I suppose I felt a bit guilty."

"Hermione, he could have murdered you in your sleep."

Hermione tipped over onto her side, drawing her head up from her knees to gaze at her friends unforgiving face wearily. "I truly believe he's not that sort of person anymore, Ginny. I don't think he ever was. Something's changed, and I've been trying vainly to figure out what it is." There was something calculating in Ginny's eyes now, and Hermione squirmed before speaking again. "You won't tell Harry, will you?" Her voice sounded small. She didn't want to think of her friend's reaction if he discovered that she had helped his mortal enemy.

Ginny stared at her for several moments more, her expression unreadable except for that unnerving cognizance in her gaze. After a minute or so, she replied, "Of course not… Not if you don't want me to." She hesitated for a moment, a sad smile emerging that both lifted and shadowed her face. "Can you imagine what Ron would've said?"

This caused Hermione's features to draw blank and stony, her face impassive save for a glint of grief shining at the corner of her eye. She had wondered what Ron's response to all of this would have been, and the thought caused something in her chest to constrict painfully.

She tried not to think of how much she had left out when relaying the story of the night before to Ginny. She hadn't told her about the look on Draco's face when she had touched him. She hadn't told her about the embrace that had seemed to draw both of them back to something real. She hadn't told her that she had woken up several times during the night to confirm that he hadn't tried to hurt himself and had stared for perhaps too long at the way the light from the window glanced across the planes of his face, listening to the quiet, tortured sounds he made as he slept.

Yes, Ron would have been undoubtedly furious at her.

-

The following night, Hermione dreamt a very strange thing. She did not dream of the memories that usually swam before her closed eyelids like a horrifying promise, but instead awoke, panting, her skin tingling curiously, to a once-familiar hot slick at the apex of her thighs and visions of something pale and beautiful and broken.

She did not delude herself into believing that she did not recognize the face in her dream. She remained awake far longer than it took for the tightness in her womb to dissipate, her eyes wide and shining in the dark as she considered her fear and the fact that she was yearning for something that was essentially forbidden.

-

Hermione was having a difficult time coming to terms with the knowledge that the six weeks of her class were nearly finished. Five weeks ago the course had seemed like an unimaginably large task, something that she would have to wade through painfully, fingertips scratching for purchase. It was almost a revolution; she had lived for so long absorbed in lesson plans and contemplation, and now she didn't really know what to do with herself. There was no more negotiating with the Ministry, no more wondering if her students would finally crack and hex her into the oblivion. The last lesson of her six-week course had been meticulously planned many times over, and she had enough knowledge of her students' temperaments to know that it was unlikely that they would resort to physical violence.

And so, to ward off boredom and idle thoughts of that forbidden subject, she took walks and visited her few remaining friends. She ate supper at Harry and Ginny's three times that week and visited the Weasley's once. She invited Lupin and Tonks over for lunch and the trio laughed in remembrance of the would-be Death Eaters' expressions as they shuffled through the National Gallery. She walked daily to the quaint park near her flat and read by the stagnant pond until it became too dark to see.

She fancied she saw his face once, in the crowd. That lost, forlorn look that she'd memorized more times than she liked to consider. After a second glance, a swift double-take that caused some part of her neck to crack unpleasantly, she came to her senses and continued on her way. She was being stupid, she thought, but something was changing involuntarily and she hated that she had no control.

-

Hermione didn't look at Draco as he sat at his desk—far away, nestled in a corner so he could see the wall instead of her, she rather thought—and he seemed perfectly content to return the sentiment…until she began to speak; then she felt his eyes on her always.

She resolutely ignored this as well as the absence of six students that stood out in stark emptiness against the other occupants of the room, whose eyes wandered occasionally to their empty seats in half horror, half curiosity. Hermione had indeed reported those six students' refusal to enter Azkaban to the Ministry, as was required of her, but she had also explained to them the circumstances of said refusal and hoped that the Ministry would be lenient. She paid absolutely no attention to the murmurs flicking about the room and, once each body had been planted firmly into a chair, spoke in a cool and unruffled tone as per usual.

"We won't be here too long today, and you've all heard it before, so I'll spare any pleasantries." This drew several raised eyebrows, which she predictably disregarded. "Can I presume that you're all glad this is our last remaining lesson?" Hermione noticed that this warranted a smile or two amongst the crowd, and she ventured a small one of her own in return. "Mmm. Well, you're all not out of the woods yet, I'm afraid. Within the past six weeks, you've read a piece of classic Muggle literature, studied one of their philosophers, examined arguably the darkest period of the histories of both the Muggle and Wizarding worlds, and observed some of the most famous works of art in the world. You've been to Azkaban."

The collective shudder around the room was palpable. Draco's eyes were locked on her face, and she saw him falter then, if only for a moment.

"Today, however, we're going to talk science."

Oh, the confusion over _that_. Hermione smiled at the many raised eyebrows and sideways looks to neighbors. She knew for a fact that most purebloods heard very little about Muggle science throughout their lives, if anything; they were bound to be a bit puzzled.

"But what does that have to do with anything, Granger? Isn't 'science' just a horde of foolish muggles piddling about with beakers and migrospokes?" Asked Pansy, her slightly squashed face scrunching in bewilderment.

"Microscopes," Hermione corrected as she grinned thoughtfully. "And yes, I suppose you could say that, minus the 'foolish'. Scientists are most definitely not foolish—well, most of them, that is. And they have a bit more than beakers and microscopes at their disposal." With that, she turned and, coincidently, collected a beaker containing a clear, slightly filmy substance and a small glass rod from her desk. She stirred the contents of the beaker carefully, and, with a painfully steady hand and infinite care, lifted the glass rod from the beaker to expose several miniscule, clear strands of what appeared to be the substance in the beaker that stretched the several inches from the surface of the liquid to the glass of the stirring rod. They glinted faintly in the light, like water charmed to hold its place. There was a spark of genuine excitement and thrill in Hermione's eyes now, and she flicked her gaze from her ministrations to her class.

"You all are very lucky I've had biology in Muggle schools, because this is an amazing thing to see. This," she began, but frowned as the strands broke and had to spend several seconds retrieving another, "is Deoxyribonucleic acid—DNA. Do any of you know what DNA is?"

Two hands.

_Two._

-

Hermione was tempted to call on Vulpe, knowing that she would supply an answer to her question that was reasonably accurate. Instead, she bit the bullet and pointed to the only other remaining hand, belonging to Millicent Bulstrode, of all people. After she responded hesitantly ("It's like… a spell or potion that tells the body how to perform all its functions, right?"), Hermione suppressed a snort of amusement and explained.

"Um… sort of. DNA are tiny, strand-shaped molecules that exist in the nucleus—the center—of every single cell in our bodies. Our bodies are made of cells. They look a bit like a twisted ladder, and are composed of a sugar-phosphate backbone and four bases. The order of these bases dictate what proteins are made inside our bodies, which in turn controls the color of our skin, the function of our organs, the hormones we create, whether we are healthy or have a debilitating genetic disease, and, to some degree, our personality, although that is debatable depending on your beliefs. Basically, the order of those four bases determines our appearance and everything else inside our bodies. It's a remarkably simple but ingenious method of controlling the body, shaped and developed over billions of years of evolution. As far as we know, every living thing on the earth uses DNA in this manner." Hermione paused, glancing at the faintly impressed faces of her students. "Wizard or no, pureblood or otherwise, we all have DNA inside our bodies and it is used _exactly_ the same way.

"That's simple enough, really. Complications begin to arise when the system makes a mistake. DNA replicates in order to create new cells, but an error occurs. An alteration in the order of the bases by _one_ can cause anything from a genetic disease that kills children by the time they reach the age of two to absolutely nothing.

"In Paris there is a select group of wizards who use a mixture of muggle technology and magic in their studies. They have been examining the differences between muggle and wizard DNA and last year set their sights on sequencing both types and discovering what _exactly_ makes wizards different than muggles or vice versa. In November they published their findings: what determines a wizard from a muggle is the order of one 'rung' in the 'ladder' of DNA, an adenine-thymine pair in place of a guanine-cytosine pair. _One_. This causes a mutated hormone to form, which in turn activates a usually dormant part of the brain that triggers and controls magic."

Hermione quieted then, taking a deep breath to calm her whirling head. She felt heated and unsteady, and for an instant wavered and her eyes connected with Draco's, for he had been gazing intently at her the entire time. She dropped her eyes quickly and continued. "We are all wizards and witches because of a genetic _mutation_. We are not the norm, muggles are."

This prompted several bursts of protests from various occupants of the room, and Hermione waited patiently for them to subside, her expression eerily tranquil.

"But how can you know for sure that it isn't the opposite?" This from Vulpe, who looked rather amused, as if she enjoyed both challenging Hermione and the sullen objections of her peers.

Hermione smiled, close-lipped and eyes sparking with what could have been mirth. "Good question. Our scientist friends thought of that, too. Their conclusion is obviously the most obvious, considering how many muggleborns exist. They also discovered that this mutation is dominant, which means that it is passed hereditarily almost 100 percent of the time; if both your parents are wizards, it's almost certain that you will be as well. If one parent is a wizard and the other a muggle, you have either a 50 or 100 percent chance of being born with magical powers, depending on whether the wizard parent is a pureblood or half-blood. But they did consider other options. The most intelligent thing to do when contemplating the opposite of this theory would be to study squibs. Perhaps, they thought, squibs were the product of a mutation in the wizard genome and muggles were actually the result of a diversion from the norm? They eventually determined that squibs occur due to a malfunction later in the process of creating the hormone, during the procedure of transcribing the messenger RNA, which we won't explore further lest I confuse you even more than I already have. In short, squibs are generally the product of another mutation entirely, which in part explains their rarity. In contrast, muggleborns are very common. This evidence points to the fact that wizards are actually the outcome of a mutation, which means, of course, that there is actually no such thing as a pureblood, because every family _had to_ originate from a muggle at one point in history. It's just that it was so long ago that no one can remember."

Hermione hesitated for a moment, registering the expressions on the faces of her pupils (ranging from shocked to skeptical to outright disbelief) and the silence of the room. On an impulse, Hermione flicked her gaze to the silent inhabitant of the chair in the corner and spoke, in a tone somewhat more brusque than before. "Draco, how many generations can your family trace its lineage back to, just out of curiosity?"

He looked up sharply, his eyes narrowing as they met hers. When he spoke, however, his voice was utterly calm, a monotone tenor that caused Hermione to flinch without warning. "Forty or so, I should think."

"The first recorded member, if you recall?" Her voice fluttered and she hated it.

"Alexandre Ferrau du Malfoi,"—his accent was impeccable—"born 1032 A.D., died 1081." He looked a bit perturbed to be questioned about his family, and his eyes were flat and hard on hers.

"Ahh." Hermione found the fact that he knew this quite freakish, but didn't voice her reaction. "Well, let's guess that the first…er…_Malfoi _was actually born some one hundred years before this, but by the time anyone thought to record the family history, he could only remember as far back as their grandfather. Don't you think that it is perfectly plausible that the first Malfoy could have been born to muggle parents?" She could not gauge Draco's reaction to this, and tore her eyes from his to examine the remainder of the class. "Just speculation, mind you. Now, whether you choose to take this to heart or not, please _attempt_ to understand that blood, despite what your parents may have told you, doesn't make much of a difference in our world. Muggleborns do just as well in society, are just as intelligent, and are just as magically-capable as quote-unquote 'purebloods'."

Grudging silence.

"As I said, we won't be here much longer. I'm not telling you how to live your life, here. I'm not even telling you to _change_ anything. The only thing I'm _asking_ you to do is to think about what we've discussed in this class. _Think_ about Nietzsche, and how he believed that an overman, someone so perfect and above the line of morality, could essentially wipe out the mediocre majority to 'advance' society. Think about how that relates to Voldemort. Think about Adolf Hitler, his millions of victims, and how the war could have been. Remember that Muggle society has its values and merits as well. Consider the option that we are physically different from Muggles because of _one_ mutation, because of something as unpredictable as _chance_, and that the term 'pureblooded' might be nothing but an illusion, meant to categorize people into groups that produce cruelty and prejudice." Hermione exhaled unsteadily, clasping her hands in a rigid entwinement before her, her knuckles white.

_I have to make them see_. _Everything they know is deception._

Before she could register that this was _bad_, that this was _not_ what she should be doing, she was walking over to the last place on earth she wanted to be and grabbed his arm and hauled him to his feet. Dragged him to the front of the room and ripped his left sleeve up to his elbow. He stared at her, face set in stone and lips pressed thinly. Not struggling. Letting her do it. Letting her _show_ it.

Much of the class recoiled in their seats, unaccustomed to seeing one of theirs (so young, so unready) marked with that burning blackness. Hermione offered his pale forearm to them, her fingers digging into his flesh. His muscles were rigid beneath her hands (what are you _doing_, you silly girl?), the skin hot. She was breathing hard, her heart fluttering weakly in her chest as she fought sudden vertigo.

She couldn't look at it. She _couldn't_.

"_This _is not a symbol of glory, or power, or loyalty!" She nearly screamed, so lost in anger and grief that she could feel it like a wave coming to bury her.

Draco was shaking. It could have been her, though, trembling and wanting to _scream_ because these people couldn't seem to _get it._

_I have to make them see._

"This is a symbol of hatred and brutality, and…and fucking _inhumanity! _It's not…" And here she weakened, curling in on her pain so that she was almost using the marked man next to her for support, her hands clenching his arm _so hard_. She took a breath, and straightened. "It's not something to be proud of."

And then she let him go and wanted to say something (I'm sorry?) but didn't. He looked at her for a long moment, looked at the side of her face that was turned away from him because she didn't want to _see,_ and then went back to his seat and pulled his sleeve over that faded mark with her handprints in red all around it.

Hermione didn't care that she'd finally had the breakdown that they all said she would have. She simply went on. "Just… _think_ for your self. Remember what the consequences of prejudice can be. And, for God's sake, _never_ forget those we have lost, and why we have lost them," she whispered at last, sinking back to lean against her desk in her exhaustion, not caring that tears carved tracks down her face (you cry so _much_, silly girl). She forgot to be embarrassed. She had cracked her chest and bared her heart for them all to see, but she forgot to be humiliated. The class was completely hushed, shocked as they stared at this broken, sad girl. She felt the steady heat of Draco's eyes and looked up, her gaze holding his with a thing that was unspoken and secret. She saw a resolution in his face then, and felt what could have been dread or something else pool in her gut. She looked away.

_Ron, I miss you._

She didn't know why the thought pervaded her mind just then, but it brought her some brand of strength. With a deep, collecting breath, Hermione spoke again, clearly and without tears, if a bit flat. "I wish to thank you all for being cooperative over these past six weeks; it has made my job much easier. I hope I've made some impact on your lives. You're all free to leave."

As they were collecting their bags and shooting furtive, uncertain looks in her direction, Hermione remembered one last thing. "You may all keep your copy of _Crime and Punishment._ A memento, let's call it."

She received more than several withered glances in response to that. More than one person touched her arm as they walked out of the room in thanks or comfort. She wasn't sure.

-

They all left and she stayed still, head in her hands as she breathed. In and out, and again.

"I should be furious at you, you know." She knew his voice.

She didn't raise her head, but shook it slowly and stared at the ground. "I know. I know. I'm so sorry, Draco. That was not…kind of me."

A pause. Sought-after silence "You are so fucked up, Hermione Granger."

She looked up at him in surprise—was that some kind of a smile in the curve of his lips? Something in her body trembled. "So are you, hypocrite. Don't patronize me," she snapped coldly.

The some kind of smile disappeared. "I just…" He stopped like it pained him, and then tried again. "I wanted to thank you."

She could have fallen over. "W-What?"

"For last week."

"Oh."

More silence, only not so sought-after.

"Why are you so…different, Draco?" She asked as her tears dried and she felt normalcy begin to ease everything again.

He didn't answer for such a long time and only looked at her, the whole thing written out in the sharp lines of his face like a perverted fairy tale. "Merlin, Granger. Haven't you figured it out yet?"

Now was the time to explode. She was so _confused_. "No! Goddamnit, no! Was it the war? Voldemort cursing your mum until her brains leaked out her ears?"

Oh yeah, she knew about that. She read the papers, after all.

He flinched and looked like he wanted to physically shut her up with his hands or something else. He took a step towards her. "Granger—"

"No! You don't get to do that anymore! Come on, Draco, tell me, because I'm at the end of my rope. God, I hate you! Was it your dad? That bloody vacant house you live in? You are not _supposed_ to be civil! You're supposed to be the bigoted prick that called me 'mudblood' and would've _killed_ Dumbledore if he weren't such a fucking _coward_! You're not supposed to…" She couldn't go on and her face crumpled but she didn't cry.

He stepped forward again and grabbed her shoulders and _shook_ her, because they both thought maybe she needed it. Her hair fell out of its styling and brushed his hands as it tumbled harshly down her back. When he spoke his voice was very quiet, and his body was stiff with the effort of controlling it. "Shut _up_, you stupid bint, and don't talk about things you don't understand."

"You're right, Draco, I _don't_ understand!" She shouted this to his face, pounding on his chest with her stupid, pathetic little fists. "So please, just _tell_ me something so I'm not so fucking _confused_!"

His hands on her shoulders grew tighter, and she just _knew_ that the next day there would be five finger-shaped bruises on each side. He was staring at her, his eyes flicking back and forth as he studied hers, and then once down for nary a moment, to what could have been her lips. "You want answers, Granger?"

She let her head loll down, her hair covering her face because she was so _tired._ "Just help me to not be so confused, Draco. I just want things to be normal again."

"You'd rather I hate you and call you names and fucking _kill_ people?"

"I don't know."

"You'd rather I be to disgusted to touch you?" And here his grip on her shoulders loosened, almost to a caress, and he stroked one finger down the side of her neck, across the shallow curve that made her shiver.

"I don't _know._"

"You don't know."

She looked up at him, staring straight into those gray eyes that held something that scared her, and jumped. "Is it me?"

He laughed, then. He threw back his head and laughed, his hands still on her. "It's _everything_," he hissed after he stopped laughing, abruptly and unnaturally. He leaned in close to her, his cheek almost touching hers as he whispered into her ear. "You come in to this classroom and you tell us everything we know is wrong. You come in looking like you do with your fucking confidence that covers up how truly _messed up_ you really are and your muggle clothes and your hair and the knowledge that you're so smart that _no one_ can argue with you. You say our parents are racist pigs who deserve nothing, not even Azkaban, and then you smile and say all you want for us to do is _think._ You tell us that Voldemort, the mentor of my crackpot _father_, was a fraud and not worth the time of day. You say there's no difference between mudbloods and people like me. You say muggles are just…like…us. You wanted answers? There you are."

Hermione stood completely still, skin humming and lips trembling. "I s-say that because it's _true_, Draco."

He finally stepped back from her, his eyes so intense that she nearly buckled. "Damn it, Granger, you're slow. The reason I've changed is because I fucking _know_ that."

Her mouth opened but no sound came out. She finally managed a quiet exclamation, a shocked "o-oh."

"Remember the museum, when I said I'd lost everything?" He began, his fists clenched hard at his sides like he was trying to not touch her again. "I said that because I have. Because you've ripped everything I've ever known right out from under my feet like it was so _easy_ for you. And I can't…_hate you_ for it."

Now it was she who took a step closer to him, wanting to sooth the tremor in his jaw, the quiet desperation that the position of his body told of. "It wasn't easy for me."

He turned on her, grabbing her wrists and pushing her back until her bum pressed against the desk and he pressed against her. But she was not afraid. "Oh yeah?" He murmured harshly, squeezing her wrists hard enough to cause the bones to grind together unpleasantly. Hermione winced. "Well, it certainly looked it. You tore everything apart, Granger, and then you smiled at us like it was nothing."

And then she was crying again. "But it wasn't! I _knew_ how much it would be hurting you all, but I _had_ to do it!"

"Really? Why did you 'have' to do it, you sanctimonious bitch? Who was forcing you?"

"I did it because it's the right thing to do!" This she said in a broken voice, and something in her heart shattered with his face crushed just as hers had done and he dropped his head so that it was almost touching her, his grip on her wrists loosening.

She saw that his face was wet, and he finally allowed his forehead to rest on her shoulder. "Merlin, Granger. Have mercy, will you? Every time you speak you undo me."

And then he was kissing her, broken, silly little girl and all.

-

_**"The irrationality of a thing is no argument against its existence, rather a condition of it."**_

_**-- Friedrich Nietzsche**_

-

**Author's Note**: Whoop! That was long! I hope it was sufficiently beautiful; the last 500 words or so were meant to be.

_**EDIT:**_ I changed the eensy bitty little mistake I made concerning the explaination of genetics in Hermione's lesson, because I'm anal like that and I can't stand to break some little pea-growing Austrian monk's rules. Blah. I actually realized my error when I read through the chapter several days after posting it, and have only now gotten around to fixing it. Kudos if you can figure out what it was Thanks to those who pointed it out, all you science majors you. I bet you can tell that genetics are a bit rusty in my brain, like just about everything else.

Awww… I love Draco so much. Angst galore.

I _know_ that this chapter was a long time in coming. It's getting harder and harder for me to get into the writing mode—once I'm there, however, I can write for hours and hours on end. I think it has something to do with the holidays and laziness. What can you do?

Anyway, this fic might end up being longer than I said it was going to be. I've found some new inspiration. Not _too_ much longer, mind you, but longer than eleven chapters, at least.

I love you all, and tell me what you think.


	10. Civil War

Chapter: Civil War

-

"_**All of life is a dispute over taste and tasting."**_

_**-- Friedrich Nietzsche**_

-

_**Note**: Yes, I've finally relented and changed the rating. This story is now M for mature, although it's not a very hard M… Well, see for yourself._

-

Hermione peered through the steam to view her reflection in the mirror, fogged and streaked with condensation that made the outline of her body blurry and imprecise. She saw nothing but a pale blob, slightly pinkish from the heat of her shower, and found that it was remarkably preferable to the alternative likeness that she would have seen had the heat and moisture been absent from the bathroom. In a hazy world away from all the rest, with light dimmed by nebulous vapor and sharp lines turned soft, she could forget and remember as she pleased.

A long time ago Hermione decided that she didn't really believe in God. At the beginning of the war, when the first reports of the torture and murder of innocents began to roll in, when time seemed to stand still for the pain of hearing of another tragic hero who wasn't really a hero at all, she wavered, caught between tradition and anger and determination, for one sleepless night. In the morning she rose from her bed having resolved not to throw her allegiance away to a god that could allow _those kinds of things._ She did not want to believe that something that cruel existed to tolerate without interference the monstrosities they heard of _every day_.

And then her innocence was gone.

She had not been a particularly religious person to begin with. Her parents had been those sort of Presbyterians who made the long trek to the neighborhood church maybe once every two months. But she had never before believed that God did not exist until that restless night. Since the war, things had been different.

Hermione stared at her reflection.

-

She was pulling on a soft pair of flannel pants and a worn t-shirt when it all came back to her. She sat on her bed and put her head in her hands, hair dripping and lank about her obscured face.

_Nothing. For a moment, blissful nothing. She welcomed it and sank into herself. _

_**Release.**_

_Then she saw sparks, and her senses crashed open. _

_He was not gentle and she had to curve her spine back over the desk to accommodate for him. The wetness on her face became the wetness on his, and suddenly neither knew who had _really _been broken._

_He tasted vast and cold, and she was lost within it. Their bodies, just illusions and energy in the huge spectrum of everything, seemed to meld into one and he was kissing her so _hard.

_Finally everything came back, hit her fast enough to make her stumble, and she put her hands against him and pushed. No more nothing, because it couldn't have lasted. He made a sound deep in his throat like torture but stepped away from her._

"_I can't… I just…" She couldn't speak and fled like a child._

-

Hermione fell asleep at eleven with her hair still wet. Thirty-seven minutes later the doorbell rang, and she jerked awake. She sat up, swung her legs around the side of the bed, and stayed still and quiet, trying to decide whether the noise had been part of a dream or otherwise. But then the rhythmic pounding started, a fist on her door over and over, and she was _really_ awake. She grabbed a can of pepper spray and wished for the thousandth time that her door had a peephole.

Padding over to the door, muscles tingling with the hope that the impatient person at her door was not an ax-murderer, she caught a glimpse of her reflection in the passing bathroom. She was all rumpled clothes and slumped shoulders, her eyes smudged with blue and her hair falling in snarled curls around her face because she hadn't done anything to make herself presentable. But she decided if it was an ax-murderer at her door he wouldn't really care.

She took a deep breath, swung her door open, and dropped her can of pepper spray.

And Draco Malfoy said, "You can't just leave us _out_ here."

He looked just as bad as she did. Mirrored blue smudges.

Hermione backed away, just a step, because he looked entirely desolate. Then she croaked, because she had only just woken up, "W-What are you doing here? How…?"

But he didn't answer her, and stepped into her flat and came so _close_. He kept walking until she was against the wall, looking back and forth (anywhere but his face) for an escape.

"You can't just _leave_ us. It doesn't _work_."

She finally stopped panicking, even though he was very nearly touching her with his entire body, and began to focus on the fact that he sounded very nearly insane. She wished desperately for her can of pepper spray.

"Us?" She asked in a very small voice, wanting clarity.

_Please, not the voices in your head. _

His eyes, very angry and very lost, lighted on hers. "Your fucking _students_!"

She let out a sigh of relief before he placed a forearm over her shoulder and _pushed_ so that she could hear something in her collarbone pop. She let out a yelp even though it didn't really hurt.

She could only see him. He was close and all she could see was his face and the hard lines of his anger and confusion. "I don't u-understand, Draco… Let me go, please." It finally registered that she was scared, and the fear hit her like it actually had weight.

But he dropped his head and shook it, breathing out hard through his nose. And then, instead of letting her go, he pushed closer and grasped her waist and lifted until only her toes could touch the fading carpet of her flat. He pressed her there, his chest against hers, her eyes now completely level with his, and smiled grimly.

"I took a walk today, in Diagon Alley. I tried to clear my head after what happened this afternoon. It didn't _work_," he said bitterly, his voice a near whisper into the skin of her cheek, and Hermione was gasping with the fear of it. "You can't just _leave_ my fucking head, do you know that?"

He said it like it was her fault, and she almost felt like she should apologize for it. But he didn't giver her the time.

"I noticed another thing, too. I don't know how to _act_ around anyone anymore. You set us up for your idea of bloody redemption and left us out in the real world to _rot_. You told us what we feel is wrong but you never told us how to _fix_ it, how to exist without what we've known for our entire lives. Everything is fucking… _adrift_. The civil war after the revolution, Granger."

Hermione couldn't breathe properly, and she was gulping air against him. Through it all, she felt a crack of pity and lifted her eyes to stare directly into his, her breath calming as the fear left her suddenly. "I'm sorry, Draco. I don't know what else to say but that I'm sorry for everything. But you have to know… you have to know that it's all for the best, and that something good will come out of it in the end." She couldn't concentrate any further and fell silent. He was so close to her. She could feel every part of him.

He was the first to drop his eyes and press hard into her. He was the first to meet her lips with his, but she was not far behind.

There was something, this time. No bliss, but something hotter and more archaic.

She could taste his loss and his confusion and his hate. He hated her. He wanted her. She kissed him like she had nothing to loose. He pushed fast against her and slid a hand under her thigh to hitch her knee over his hip.

_There._

Hermione's eyes flew open and she made a sound in her chest that didn't seem like her. He was hissing his breath through his teeth as he laved her neck and breasts through her shirt. Her tears fell steadily into his pale hair. So long ago, she had done this.

_Yes. _

She managed to rip his shirt over his head just as he did hers. She wanted him bare before her. He let out a deep rumble when he saw she was wearing nothing underneath. She shouldn't have whimpered like a child when he touched her skin, touched his mouth to her breasts hard like punishment. She felt him all over.

She couldn't remember how his trousers ended up around his knees and her frumpy pants fell to the floor, but soon she was poised at the entrance, the _cliff_, with her legs smelling like apricot peach from her shower wrapped around his waist and his hand in between their bodies making her cry. He stopped just before everything broke and she clung to him, breathless and choking on air, open-mouthed against his bare shoulder.

His voice came harsh in her ear. "Tell me, Granger. Tell me you don't want this. _Please._"

But she couldn't. She couldn't even speak.

There was something hard and cold and bleak in his eyes as he pushed her back until she was against the wall once more and was finally _there_. Her back arched on its own accord, tight as a violin string, until she started to move with him. He damned her with oath after oath even as he groaned against her with each thrust.

-

Later, after they had made it just as far as her bed and unknowingly discarded the sheets, twisted and forgotten on the floor, Draco said something like, "This is nothing, you know. This is nothing."

And Hermione replied in a distant manner, "Of course. Of course it isn't."

Or something like that.

-

_Ron was running away from her._

Hermione was dreaming.

_She couldn't catch him. She had to explain._

_Ron kisses her, and a viscous heat grows between them._

_She couldn't fucking CATCH him._

_How could she have forgotten?_

"_Ron!_" She breathed as she started awake, lying still for a moment to regain her bearings. There was a swell of disgusted guilt in her chest, of betrayal and hate.

The other side of the bed was empty but still warm.

Hermione finally sat up and saw that he was standing at the door to her bedroom, dressed and groomed like nothing had ever happened. He was perfectly composed while she was shivering and naked on the bed with tears carving valleys down her face.

_Not fair._

She reached for the sheets on the floor and covered herself.

"You were saying his name in your sleep."

Hermione's patience ran out, and she threw his words back in his face like the bitch she really was sometimes. "Yes. But this is nothing, isn't it?"

He barely flinched but it was there, and he looked like he wanted to say something more. Instead he turned and left, slammed the door behind him and left her.

She didn't cry at all.

She didn't see him again for more than a year.

She didn't want _anything_ more, she told herself.

-

"_**The future influences the present as much as the past." **_

_**- Friedrich Neitzsche**_

-

**Author's Note**: Whoever said emptying a full bladder is better than sex didn't know what they were talking about. That's my pearl of wisdom for today. :)

Yes, I know it has been a long time coming and that this is rather short. In my defense, semester finals have only just finished and I'm _tired_. There you go.

Wow! This month has definitely been one of nominations and success, both in my fanfiction life and otherwise. I'll keep my interesting new developments in real life under wraps, but as for the other stuff:

**This story has been nominated for three separate awards at two separate award sites (eek!)**. The first is at the "He Had It Coming" Dramione Award Site (Thanks Youoweme5bucks-now/Mimi), and I've been nominated for best WIP. I know the URL won't work, but you'll have to copy and paste it if you'd like to check it out: http/dramione.

The second is at Dangerous Liaisons Awards (thanks to whoever nominated me!), and I've been nominated for best Drama/Angst Fic (The I Never Really Loved You Anyway Award. Hehe!) and best WIP, although the category for that one was already full and it'll go in either the WIP or complete categories in the next round, depending on whether I've completed it or not. http/ check them out/vote (if you like?). It's very exciting, but I'm up against some pretty fantastic fics so I have very, very small expectations.

Another thing: I've written a one shot called "Because This Is How It Goes," so if you feel like something depressing go have a look. It's very, very different from The Nietzsche Classes.

Anyway, I hope the steaminess/angstyness of this chapter is satisfying and it at least partly makes up for the obscene length of time between my updates. Now that the semester is over maybe I'll have more time. Love you all, and let me know what you think!


	11. What They Knew

Chapter: What They Knew

-

_**"Character is determined more by the lack of certain experiences than by those one has had."**_

_**-- Friedrich Nietzsche**_

-

Hermione had once promised herself that she would never again approach the bleak walls of this place. And yet here she was, willingly and without falter, nearly a year after her last visit, striding determinedly forth into the dark. The screams reached her ears while she was still a quarter mile off. Harry flinched beside her, and she laid her hand briefly on his swinging forearm without looking at him.

Azkaban loomed in the distance.

They met a guard, a shriveled old stick of a man, outside the imposing, stained doors. He said nothing and didn't need to ask where they were headed; her position and undertaking were well-known in general wizarding society—_The Daily Prophet_ had made sure of it.

This time she didn't look inside the cells until they had reached their destination. Harry, she saw from the corner of her eye, could not stop staring. If the prisoners had been able to see through their confinements as he could, Hermione thought, many of them would have sat up and stared back. Would they curse or exalt him? She couldn't say.

They rounded the corner and Hermione heard Harry hiss through his teeth. The prisoner sat against the wall of his cell, clad in nothing but the standard rented and grubby uniform of Azkaban and paler than any human being she had ever seen.

It was the first time Harry had seen this particular convict since the night his hero had fallen into the oblivion.

Hermione spoke first, because she felt that Harry would not be able to. "Professor?"

Severus Snape's head jerked towards the sound of the disembodied voice but he said nothing, waiting, she felt, to perceive whether the sound was real or merely a product of his imprisoned mind.

"It's Hermione Granger and Harry Potter. We've…ah…we've come to give you some news."

Now she had attained his attention. He shifted slightly and narrowed his eyes over his hooked nose. "Harry Potter, you say? What could he possibly want with me, Miss Granger?"

Harry, after several moments of surprised contemplation, coldly voiced a reply. "I want to see if what Hermione said of her visit last year is true. I want to _see_,"—here his voice turned bitter—"if you really killed Albus Dumbledore because you wanted to and your Dark Lord wanted you to… or for some other reason all together."

Hermione whirled fast on her friend, whispering hurriedly to his face. "Shut _up_, Harry. You're going to agitate him."

Harry stayed quiet but didn't seem at all happy about it.

Hermione turned back towards her former professor, fixing an impassive look on her face instinctively although she knew that he could not see her. Snape was staring blankly at her, even through the solid wall that he saw but she didn't. It unnerved her considerably. He had remained silent throughout Harry's outburst and didn't seem disposed to defend himself.

Hermione took a deep breath and began with a distinctly businesslike tone. "First of all, I want to inform you of some of the events that have taken place in the last year. Three months after my visit, approximately nine months ago today, the Ministry discovered three previously unknown witnesses to the alleged crimes of the Miles Bletchley, Amycus Carrow, and Georgiana Diggory. As you know all of these prisoners, in a situation strikingly similar to your own, were sent to Azkaban without trial due to the apparent heinousness of their crimes. As it turned out, these three witnesses, who had each been quite close to one of three prisoners, could provide alibis form most of the crimes the Ministry had convicted them for. Under the circumstances of their lengthy imprisonment previous to this discovery, these three were set free. I believe that Georgiana Diggory, in particular, has returned entirely to her life previous to her brief dabbling in the Dark Arts, and lives with her five year old daughter and ailing husband in a quiet corner of Suffolk."

Snape received this information pensively and with a keen expression on his sallow face. "And? Surely you could not have come all this way just to tell me that? Go on… yes…on, and on."

Harry frowned beside her, and turned to whisper discreetly in her ear. "He's not…?"

"Oh, I believe he's sane…it's only that this place has muddled him a bit, I think. Several months of freedom and he would be right as rain, if not a little surlier than usual."

"Miss Granger! I have all the time…yes, all the time in the world, but I was never a very patient man," came Snape's voice from within the cell.

"I apologize. Anyway, after hearing this news, I began to recall more clearly out meeting of last year. I remembered very distinctly your words concerning Dumbledore's murder."

She did not miss to note that the grimace that passed over Harry's face at her words was mirrored on Snape's. "I began to consider whether or not everything was as it seemed that night in the Astronomy Tower. I went to Harry and told him what you had said. He was reluctant to believe me…" Hermione glanced sideways at Harry as he flushed slightly. "Reluctant" was one word for his reaction. In reality, he had raged at her for a near ten minutes for her betrayal while she sat and waited for his head to clear. She continued. "…but in the end…"

…_after three months…_

"...he began to consider the possibility of the Ministry's hasty conclusion. Together we went to the Ministry and petitioned our case. They took some convincing and a lot of evidence supporting our suspicions scrounged up personally by Harry and me, but just last week they have agreed to give you a trial. Long overdue, in my opinion."

Silence. Snape sat and stared at the wall. Cleared his throat, and spoke with a voice that she could barely hear and that cracked with the first real _feeling_ he had probably felt since his imprisonment. "Why?"

"Because I _knew_ you. We all did, in school. And I didn't think you were so heartless as to murder in cold blood the man who saved your life with no reason except to gain the favor of Voldemort. Cold and vindictive, perhaps, but not murderously so. And I could tell, throughout those six years we were at school, that you held real respect for him. You're a good actor, there's no question, but you're not _that_ good. Harry agrees with me." To prove her point, she elbowed Harry in the ribs.

"I do," said Harry through gritted teeth, angry and acrid, still, in the sudden presence of his once sworn enemy.

And Snape, a man who had probably only ever shown gratitude to one other person, said nothing but "thank you," and stared completely motionless at the wall, tears streaming down his face. Hermione and Harry left soon after.

-

When Hermione thought of the events of the past year, she liked to remember only the good things. She liked to remember that Harry had finally proposed to Ginny, amid good-natured fanfares of "took you long enough!" and "it's about bloody time!" and "oh Harry, dear, we felt for sure you were of 'the other sort of men' for a while there, if you know what I mean!" She liked to remember how Molly Weasley had stopped setting three extra places at the table. She liked to remember that she had at last found something to _do,_ and that she had almost stopped dreaming of the two bodies in the grass, the two people she had loved most in the world besides Ron.

She did _not_ like remembering that at Harry and Ginny's engagement party she had become so drunk that she could not stand straight on her heels and could not keep the straps of her demure gray dress over her shoulders, and Harry had had to carry her outside and apparate her back to her flat. She did not like remembering that she had blabbed out the whole story to him, the _whole_ story, before she vomited on his hundred-galleon suit. She did not like remembering that he had called Ginny over as well, and they had stayed with her all night. And she did not like remembering that they missed their party and that in the morning when she awoke with a splitting headache and a sick-tasting mouth, Harry Potter had looked at her square in the eye with anger written all over his face and said, "I'll kill him. I'll _kill_ him."

That was her downfall, her low point, and she _hated_ it.

She also did not like remembering that she still dreamed of Ron every night, of his running and her chasing. She did not like remembering that she now dreamed of _him_, as well.

So mostly she tried not to think about the past at all, and faced the future with an inquisitive eye.

-

Three months after the conclusion of The Nietzsche Classes, as _The__Prophet_ was calling them after someone had leaked information about their content, Hermione had slipped on the steps of Flourish & Blotts and twisted her ankle hard enough to make her cry out. She'd clambered to her feet amongst the crowd of concerned bystanders, tears shimmering in her eyes, but two figures had emerged quickly from the crowd and pulled her arms around their shoulders—one set was broad and high, the other slim and not high at all—and helped her to sit in the metal chairs outside a small café. Vulpe Lestrange and Blaise Zabini had leaned over her, concern written on their faces, as she shut her eyes and waited for the pain, brief but substantial in its own right, to subside. Once she could speak without blubbering, she had voiced her confusion. "What are you two doing here?"

Vulpe had smiled prettily, while Blaise shrugged. "We were in the neighborhood," the former enunciated, with a careless note that told Hermione not to question their motives.

What had commenced was a truly pleasant lunch ("No, Hermione, don't you dare. My treat…Merlin knows I've enough galleons in my pocket," Blaise had insisted at its end) and an unlikely new trio of friends.

-

Once she had asked them what they knew of him.

Where had he gone?

They didn't know. Italy, perhaps? They had heard rumors that he was in Italy.

What was he doing there?

No one could say. He'd left soon after the classes were finished and had gone traveling. It was a bit of a mystery.

He'd been gone for all this time?

Yes. It was a bit of a mystery, they said.

-

Hermione apparated to her flat and sighed as she viewed the self-made disaster scene. Strewn about her dining table and the floor beneath it were newspaper clippings, scraps of paper with phone numbers and floo addresses scribbled on them, several worn journals, and something that looked suspiciously like a scroll of emerald paper with instructions and musings written in craggy, elegant script and signed at the bottom by one Lord Voldemort. _Tools of the trade_, she thought grimly, and resolved to clean it up in the morning and store what was needed as evidence for the hearing that was to take place on the Thursday afternoon of that week. Turning her eyes from the disorderedly mess, she went into the kitchen, passing an extracted article from _The Daily Prophet_ that was pinned on her refrigerator, the headline of which read "Determined Duo Hermione Granger and Harry Potter Secure Trial For Imprisoned Death Eater." On the same refrigerator resided a similar-looking article from _The Quibbler_, which stated boldly in large all-caps, "HERMIONE GRANGER AND SEVERUS SNAPE: THEIR SECRET LOVE!" Hermione paused to consider that last headline, smiling in remembrance of Harry and Blaise's reactions to the editorial it intimated, both which had been remarkably similar and equally hilarious.

She scrubbed her hands in the sink for nearly five minutes, for she could not stand to think of the remnants of Azkaban remaining on her skin for longer than was necessary. She then made herself a scant dinner, having little appetite, and went to bed early, utterly exhausted. For once, she didn't dream; the past year had been hard work.

-

Thursday morning, Hermione was in a whirl of frenzied motion. She rushed about her flat, clad only in her sensibly stylish skirt, pantyhose, and bra, searching for her dress shirt in vain. She had it in her hands just last night…

It was good, this rushed flurry. It kept her mind off being nervous. This was the day she had been working towards for months, and it had all started because she could not stand to see a man wrongly punished. She often cursed her sense of righteousness.

"Her-mio-nee! We're heeere! SHIT!"

Hermione turned just in time to see Blaise, dusty gray from his recent floo, stare momentarily at her half-naked state and abruptly whirl about so that his back was facing her. "Uh… sorry?" came his muffled voice. Apparently he was coving his entire face as well, just to be sure.

Vulpe stepped out of her fireplace moments later, eyeing the situation with an amused look on her face. Her eyes lighted on something unseen by Hermione, and she stepped over to the couch, plucking the tasteful crème shirt from the cushions. "Is this what you're looking for?"

Hermione snatched the shirt with a glare, magicked away the wrinkles, and buttoned it over the pale cups of her bra, thus saving Blaise from further embarrassment. He turned around with his hands over his eyes. "Safe?"

"Safe," assured Hermione.

"Sorry."

"It's quite alright."

"We thought you could use some moral support," said Vulpe, inspecting Hermione's hair from behind and tucking an errant strand back into the neat French twist of brown curls.

"You were right," sighed Hermione, nervous flutters already attacking her insides. If this failed, if all her efforts were for nothing, she didn't know what she would do. "They're going to call me as a witness."

"You'll do wonderfully. You'll manage," said Blaise, before she remarked that they had better go and the three of them apparated to the Ministry.

-

"Miss Granger, is it?"

"Oh, you know perfectly well," replied Hermione smartly, gazing up at the opposing attorney with a smile.

He paused for a minute, considering her. "Do you confirm that approximately one year ago you paid a visit to the defendant?"

"Yes."

"And he appeared entirely sane?"

"Oh, not entirely, of course. I daresay _you_ would become entirely incoherent within two hours of imprisonment in that place, it's that terrible." The courtroom chuckled and the attorney's face became slightly flushed. Hermione sobered. "As I said, he was not entirely lucid, but he was in a considerably better state than the rest of the prisoners. Lucius Malfoy himself was babbling at the wall like it was his wife asking for pocket-money." She could see that some residents in the court found this unbelievable, for the elder Malfoy had always seemed to the public as completely unable of loosing his composure. Hermione caught sight of Ginny giggling into her hands while Harry shushed her repeatedly. The Wizengamot loomed high above her. "Mr. Snape recognized my voice easily and spoke with a remarkable amount of eloquence for his situation. He could recall the situation of Dumbledore's death easily and processed my questions with the intellect suspected of a former Hogwart's professor. He did, however, become increasingly agitated and disconnected as our meeting progressed due to, I believe, the stifling atmosphere of his cell and the unexpected emotional onslaught as a result of our questions."

"And what were those questions that you asked him, Miss Granger?"

"I asked him why he betrayed Dumbledore, and why he had never killed Harry while he was a professor at Hogwarts if he was always working for Voldemort."

She completely ignored the hushed exclamations of shock and outrage for her use of the name.

"Er…yes. And what were his answers to these questions?" The attorney asked, somewhat flustered by now.

"He said he had never betrayed Dumbledore, and that Harry and I should learn the signs of legilimency. When I asked about Harry he said I wasn't listening, and that Dumbledore had said so. That was somewhat ambiguous. It is my opinion that Mr. Snape was far too distressed and strained to lie—"

"Simply answer the question, Miss Granger," he interrupted.

"This is part of my answer. He was too distressed to lie properly, and couldn't have possibly sounded as convincing as he did if he hadn't been telling the truth. He—"

"Miss Granger."

Hermione fell silent.

"Was there anyone else who accompanied you to the defendant's cell?" The attorney continued, giving her an altogether cold and disagreeable look.

"Yes."

"The name, if you please?"

"Draco Malfoy."

Many in the room gasped collectively.

The attorney had a glint of triumph in his eyes now, and Hermione shifted in her seat. She knew not what to expect.

"And, Miss Granger, is it true that you engaged in a brief and passionate relationship with Mr. Malfoy approximately one year ago?"

Hermione's mouth dropped open, and the room erupted. She knew _exactly_ why he was asking that question. A connection with Draco resulted in an obvious connection with Snape, and thus a motive other than just goodwill and righteousness for wishing to free him. Hermione felt the room spin for just a moment, and she blearily saw the standing and livid forms of Harry and Blaise as they shouted rudely at the attorney who had been questioning her. She saw Snape look at her with no small amount of pity in his eyes as he sat, quiet and bedraggled, next to his more than competent attorney, hired mainly with Harry's fortune with bits of Snape's meager teacher's salary sprinkled in. He stood up and voiced an obvious complaint.

"Objection! Irrelevant."

"Granted," said the Chief Warlock, a faceless wizard who Hermione did not know because he wasn't Dumbledore.

She didn't have to answer any more questions. She stumbled dumbly from the witness's chair into the arms of her friends, who whispered comforts alternating between sweet and completely enraged.

She asked them only one question as tears began to leak from her broken eyes. "How did he know? How did he know?"

They did not know, but promised that they would find out.

She heard dimly, as if through a fog, that hated attorney's voice. "Before the trial draws the a close, I would like to call a surprise witness, if I may. Could Mr. Draco Malfoy please take the stand?"

_No._

Hermione looked up, and her eyes caught gray.

-

**_"Fear is the mother of morality."_**

**_-- Friedrich Nietzsche_**

-

**Author's Note**: Okay, I can't help it. I like this chapter. And it's been only a week since my last post! Yay!

I must make everything clear: I have no idea about Snape's actual position in the books. I'm manipulating and stretching things to make them work for this particular story. Who knows? He could be the most evil bastard to ever grace the face of this earth.

Also, I know I've totally maimed Blaise's fanon personality. I apologize, but it's fanon. But _don't_ tell me I've maimed his canon personality as well because he _doesn't really have one yet._ So what, he looked cold and snotty? So what, he didn't really say anything? The world of The Nietzsche Classes is MINE, I tell you! Mwahaha! I can do what I want! Now I must take deep breaths.

I need sleep.

I bet you can tell that I have absolutely no experience in law or court situations whatsoever. It's not my fault if the British Wizengamot sounds like Law and Order, which I don't even watch. Hmm…

Anyway, I hope you enjoy this, especially the little bits of humor I put in. I figured since the last, like, ten chapters (the whole fic, if you hadn't noticed) was so depressing, I should put in something a little more lighthearted before we really got to more depressing stuff (i.e., the last line of the chapter).

Good luck in all you do, and let me know what you think. Worthy of nominations/awards? I'm still not convinced.

(Oh, and another thing. I HAVE MORE THAN 300 REVIEWS! IT'S AMAZING! THANK YOU THANK YOU!)


	12. The Puzzle

Chapter: The Puzzle

-

"_**Convictions are more dangerous foes of truth than lies."**_

_**-- Friedrich Nietzsche**_

-

He was staring at her. Trying to seize her eyes with his, trying to tell her _something_.

She was having none of it. After the first glimpse, the first shock of gray, she dropped here eyes completely and stared at her lap for the remainder of the trial.

Betrayal was stark in her heart, a sharp pain below her left breast.

His voice sounded just as she remembered.

-

"Mr. Malfoy, you were present at the scene of Albus Dumbledore's death?"

"Yes." A hoarse, strained sound.

"Under what circumstances?"

"Voldemort had threatened the death of my mother if I did not comply to his wishes and attempt to devise a way for his Death Eaters to enter the castle. He wanted me to kill Dumbledore."

This was not new information for anyone in the court, and there was no shock. He had his trial already, years before.

"And Mr. Snape assisted you in this?"

"No. I refused to let him."

"He helped you in no way whatsoever?"

"He wanted to help in order to save my life. He was sure that without his assistance I would die, an assumption that was likely correct. He did help me in an indirect manner, however, in that he performed the Unbreakable Vow with my late mother."

"And what were the conditions of this vow?"

"That he would protect me and complete my task if I was unable to do so. In Azkaban, Mr. Snape's response to my question as to why he performed the Unbreakable Vow was that he needed to 'keep up the arrangement.' I can only guess that this signifies his position as a spy for the Order of the Pheonix, and that—"

Hermione looked up, shock coloring her features. The crowd was mumbling, a dull roar that indicated their astonishment. Draco looked pale and determined, his lips set in a thin line of tension and his eyes connected solidly with hers. She cautioned a raised eyebrow, and he said something with his eyes that made her heart clench.

_I'm on your side._

And he looked beautiful to her, then.

The attorney's voice rushed forwards, eliminating further speculation, his tone suggestive of his surprise. "Mr. Malfoy, did you or did you not witness Mr Snape kill the late Albus Dumbledore with the Avada Kedavra curse?"

She was watching now.

"Yes. Dumbledore was very weak. I later learned that his recent consumption of Voldemort's protective potion was the reason for his destabilized state. I could not raise my wand against him, and the other Death Eaters rushed in to the Astronomy Tower. Snape arrived, and Dumbledore looked at Snape and begged for something—at the time I knew not what. Snape, an entirely grim expression on his face devoid of any triumph, stepped forward and killed the late Headmaster. Throughout our brief time on the run, Snape made various allusions to an agreement he had had with Dumbledore concerning his position as a double agent of sorts, knowing that I could not and would not reveal his secret to Voldemort. _I was far too indebted to him_."

Draco placed particular emphasis on this last phrase, and his eyes left hers to gaze steadily at those of the attorney, a brief smirk lighting across his features. The attorney all but sputtered, and Draco continued quickly lest he attempt to interrupt him.

"This agreement, from what I gathered, was highly perilous. I began to make sense of it after my visit one year ago to Azkaban to hear Snape's response to both Miss Granger's and my questions. Undoubtedly, Dumbledore knew of Snape's Unbreakable Vow, which I believe he had performed in order to keep up all appearances of loyalty to Voldemort in front of my mother and Bellatrix Lestrange. The information Snape was providing to the Order was invaluable, and to loose his position as a spy would cost many lives and perhaps would have cost the war. It is my belief that Dumbledore told Snape—"

"Mr. Malfoy!"

"—that if a situation should arise in which it was his life or Snape's, that Snape should kill him—"

"_Mr. Malfoy!_"

"—as a sacrifice to the cause. Dumbledore gave himself so that the light could win. I have reasonable suspicion that throughout the war, and for the time I accompanied him, Snape continued to provide information to the Order anonymously. And I _know_, I know that it was this information that allowed the Order to gain the upper hand during the Last Battle."

"Mr. Malfoy, that is quite enough," hastened the attorney, who appeared completely undone. His face was an unflattering shade of puce, and he glared at Draco as if he would very much like to devalue his claims through violence or worse. Draco stared coolly back. Hermione, through her shock, had the acute feeling that Draco had told him he would relate his account of Snape's history in an entirely different manner than he had just done. Her friends were silent beside her. Ginny squeezed her arm hard enough to hurt.

Draco continued, an impressive nonchalance drawling his voice. "Is there anything else you wish to ask of me?"

The attorney stammered, obviously aware that he had just lost his case. "N-No."

"Very well." Draco stepped down from the stand.

Hermione watched him quietly.

-

The remainder of the trial passed without a hitch. Evidence was supported, and Snape's account of his part in the war was so remarkably similar to Draco's that Hermione could not help admiring the young wizard for his brilliant powers of deduction.

In the end, Snape had his freedom. The look she shared with him when the final verdict was given was thanks enough; his eyes said it all.

-

She waited for him after everyone else had left. He emerged from the courtroom last, his strides long and sturdy. He stopped when he saw her, huddled against a corner and watching him while he didn't know it.

She spoke first. "Thank you, Draco." It came out a near whisper. "You can't know what that meant to me."

"You're welcome."

She started immediately and her eyes jumped to his, searching for a reason for his sudden icy tone, nearly hostile in a way that made her skin tremble with upheaval. She let the hurt radiate from her eyes and saw his face crack, that white mask shift for barely a moment to reveal something frightening underneath, before he closed off again.

"Why?" She asked as she moved towards him, stopping five feet or an entire universe away from him.

"I was indebted to Severus. You know that." The same cold voice, the same empty eyes.

Hermione didn't know what to say because she couldn't help but feel a perverse sort of disappointment. They stood in silence, Draco making no move to leave. He looked at her steadily and she stared back.

_I'm just as strong as you._

"You came back for this, then? Blaise and Vulpe had heard that you were in Italy," she finally said, her voice cautious in the face of this new person who she didn't really know.

He nodded. "The lawyer came looking for me."

"And you told him you would besmirch Snape's name so that you could get into the courtroom and say what really happened?"

He seemed to draw a deep breath, something stabilizing, before his lip curled up in a sneer and Hermione wanted to shrink away. "Once again, Granger, your intellect astounds."

Sarcasm.

_Enough._

"Stop it. Stop it, Draco," she said, her voice very cold and very strong. "I don't see you for a year and this is how you greet me?"

He looked taken aback for a moment, for a glimpse of time, and then he put his mask back in place. "What do you want?" He stepped closer to her, his tone rising in volume until he was shouting at her, roaring to her face. "What do you want from me, Granger? I can't _do_ this. Get away from me and leave me the fuck alone."

She didn't move, even as he stared her down and _yelled_ at her. "I'm not moving, but you're perfectly welcome to go," she said, her voice monotone and hiding her confusion and distress. With a wide sweep of her arm she motioned towards the door.

He stared at her for what could have been several seconds or several days. She swallowed, fighting the urge to cower and back down, away from him.

"Fuck this, and fuck _you_. I didn't ask for this. I didn't ask for _any_ of this." He was murmuring to the silence now, his eyes tight on hers and making all of the room slant except for him.

She couldn't think of anything to say to that, and she stayed completely stone while he advanced towards her. He suddenly seemed very large, and she would have stepped back as he neared her if she could have moved her legs. He stopped directly in front of her and leaned close, leaned to that the sides of their faces almost touched. She heard him inhale and shudder out. Again and again. She felt his breath on her neck like it was his hands and trembled.

He reached up, his hand hovering above her, above the sloped curve where her throat met her shoulders. He didn't touch and she sensed him all over as her body anticipated contact that never came.

She couldn't breath.

Finally he hissed something into her ear with a voice that sounded like it was crumbling. "I don't want to see you…_ever_ again."

Then he left, and she couldn't watch.

-

She told no one and suffered alone. She now had nothing to keep her mind off what was hurting her and began to miss meals again. She went to the apothecary and bought more powdered moonstone.

She didn't want to dream anymore, and the potion helped.

Soon she found she could not sleep more than several hours without it.

Her friends remarked casually how in the past month, since Snape's trial, she had begun to loose her coloring. Her face paled except for the permanent darkness beneath her eyes. The vibrancy that made her Hermione Granger seemed to dissolve. Harry finally asked her, took her by the arm and sat her on the toilet in his gleaming bathroom and told her that she had to tell him what was wrong or he was going to kidnap her and _make_ her tell him.

She said she was working on S.P.E.W. again and sometimes forgot to sleep. It was nothing to worry about, she said.

He let her alone after that, after she promised that she would not forget anymore.

She lost weight and had to buy new clothes. She went to Diagon Alley but couldn't handle the bright and the noise and the people.

She thought she could get through it, but while she was carrying her bag of new robes out onto the cobbled streets they began to spin, and she felt her legs give beneath her.

Suddenly everyone was around her. They thought she was ill, they thought she was dying. She tried to tell them that she was fine, she just needed a minute of rest because she was so _tired_. Someone lifted her head and tipped water down her throat.

And then she heard a familiar voice.

"_Fuck_, Granger."

He was leaning over her. She could see the outline of his face but it was fuzzed like she was looking through a poorly made pane of glass. She tried to get up.

_I don't want to see you ever again._

"Stop. You're going to hurt yourself." He pushed her back down. "Fuck!" He said again, scrubbing a hand over his face. She started to cry, then, even though she had no real reason to. There was _nothing_ wrong with her.

She could hear people asking him how he knew her, who she was. She could hear him answering, telling them that he would take her somewhere safe where she could rest.

She couldn't hear _anything _else.

She felt his arms around her back and thighs, and then the whorl of apparation.

-

Hermione woke in a bed that was not her own. Creaking one eye open, she saw nothing but gray ceiling.

She did not have gray ceilings in her flat.

She sat up, and she instantly knew where she was.

She kicked back the thick coverlet, so unlike her own, and searched for her shoes. They were at the foot of the bed and she put them on. She found her bag hanging on the bed stand and went out the door. She moved quickly and silently down the curving staircase, and searched in vain for the front door for several minutes, her nerves on end and her senses screaming.

_I can't_ do _this_.

She went down one hallway and then the next. She passed room after room. She finally neared the door, a massive oak obstacle, when his voice called out to her.

"Hermione, let me explain."

She turned around slowly and he was there. She waited for him to begin.

-

"_**He who has a strong enough why can bear almost any how." **_

_**-- Friedrich Nietzsche**_

-

**Author's Note**: Two chapters in two days! I am sooo good. I hope this chapter didn't suffer for it.

Not much to say. Draco is an enigma, as always. And, as always, all will be revealed in the end. Hermione goes into a state of severe depression, but what else is knew?

Please noticed the stylistic changes in this chapter as compared to the last. There is a reason, and it mostly has to do with Hermione's emotional state. I am inconsistent for a reason, for once!

Enjoy the luxury of having an update in so short a time; it likely won't happen again for a long time. This weekend was one of rare relaxation.

Another thing: This story is drawing to a close. At the most, three chapters are left. More likely two.

I love you all, and tell me, _please_ tell me what you think. I adore hearing from all of you.


	13. White and Red

Chapter: White and Red

-

"_**We love life, not because we are used to living but because we are used to loving."**_

_**-- Friedrich Nietzsche**_

-

There was something unreadable in his eyes, even as he took her elbow and led her into a large sitting room across the hall. She sat on a slippery horsehair chair and he stood by the empty fireplace, a long way away from her. She didn't have and couldn't think of anything to say; her brain was still casting an odd fuzzy feeling throughout her body after her collapse and weeks of minimal sleep and food.

He seemed to be waiting for something to happen, for some catalyst to arrive and make everything occur at once. She asked for a glass of water and he poured some from a weeping pitcher on a table that stood next to him. It slid cool down her throat and calmed her enough so that she could trust her voice.

"Draco, what—"

He shot her a look that demanded silence and stared into the blackness of the fireplace. Minutes passed, and she finally slung her bag over her shoulder and rose to leave.

"This is not something that I often do," came his voice, quietly and without expression, but she could still hear him because everything else was utterly silent. She stopped and sat back down. Then he seemed to collect himself, draw his shoulders square and turn his head so that he could see her. That incomprehensible thing was still roiling beneath the surface of his eyes. She folded her hands in her lap and felt that they were hot and clammy like sickness.

"Everything started, you see, on the day that I felt your tears," he said at last, and Hermione stared up at him wondering what "everything" was. But she understood on a most basic level, and that was enough.

"I think I knew that," she whispered, but he put up his hand, palm facing her, as if he could physically stop her words. She fell silent and he went on.

He was open and raw and unprotected, and she could only just understand why. Everything that made him that boy she had known from school was gone or altered. There was no sarcasm and no disgusted smirk.

And then she recognized the one thing that lied hidden beneath his eyes, the only thing besides blankness and calm that she could see on his face. It was resentment.

But there was something deeper that she couldn't see, she knew. Something more frightening and more wonderful.

"I've always been particularly interested in how different people cope with suffering. If I were to psychoanalyze myself I would say that it was because I experienced and saw so much of it as a child and adolescent. A defense mechanism, I would say."

Just then, Hermione wanted to cry. This was not the Draco Malfoy she knew. "Draco…"

"I'm _tired, _Hermione. I'm tired of dancing with you. The past year…" He started to say something but didn't.

_That _she understood perfectly. They were waltzing, hopping and sliding over what remained, fixed and forever, beneath.

"As I was saying, I've always been interested in suffering. Yours, that day when you cried and cried but were so strong it almost leveled everything, ­_fascinated ­_me. Something about the way you had given yourself so wholly to another person and how you were suffering so much for it amazed and frightened me. After that I began to think more about you."

Hermione couldn't breathe because there was a foreign weight on her chest.

"I hated myself for it. I ­_hated _myself. But most of all I hated you, because something about you had changed so irrevocably since I last saw you. Was it the war? Was it loosing Weasley and everybody else?" He was asking her now, staring at her with an alien intensity that made her want to crumble.

"Yes," she whispered after a long while. "It was everything. I… I'm not the same person I was."

"And something about the new mudblood Granger fascinated me," he continued, in a matter-of-fact tone that caused her to flinch. "It was your grief and your pain, and how you had suffered through so much and still had the bollocks to slap a man who was far out of line. Could stand up in front of your erstwhile enemies and beat them down and bring them back up again." He paused, still staring at her while she stared at the floor because she couldn't look at him.

"So?" She asked, bitter then. "You've never noticed before. You never noticed anyone who didn't believe what you believed or posed a significant threat."

With a terribly ironic half-smile, he quipped, "Again, your fault."

She remembered closeness and another sort of explanation, after she had broken down and cracked and before he had touched her, really _touched _her, for the first time.

_The reason I've changed is because I fucking _know _that._

"Oh." She wanted to apologize, but then she remembered what is right and good.

He took a deep breath and something was betrayed by the way it shuddered out. "So after our class was meant to be over, after I told you the story half-way and kissed you, I couldn't take the idea of never seeing you strong again, before an enemy and _annihilating _what they think they know. I couldn't comprehend a life without you to guide me because in six weeks my life was completely different. And the way you looked, with tears…" He stepped forward as if he didn't know his legs were moving and traced a path from the corner of her eye down to her jaw and then to her lips. "…here. I don't think you realize…"

But he stopped and shook his head. "I needed something, some kind of closure. So I performed a locating spell and went to your flat and… you know the rest."

_Tell me, Granger. Tell me you don't want this. _Please.

"But then you left," she said, and her voice wavered.

He looked at her sharply. "Don't blame me. You would have done the same in my place. It was too confused and too frightening for both of us. You know that."

She did.

"I went to America, and then Morocco. Sri Lanka and Venice. I couldn't stay in one place very long because I would get restless. I never missed anything from here, but there was something essential that I couldn't find. Then the lawyer found me and told me of Snape's trial. I walked into that courtroom and saw you take down that bastard of an attorney and I couldn't… I couldn't handle seeing you again. Something in me closed off even as I wanted to touch you. So I told you I never wanted to see you again and hoped I could forget."

Hermione decided that this was going to destroy her and she set her lips in a thin line of white. "I should go. I'm going now," she said quickly, and made it half-way to the door before he stopped her with a hard hand on her elbow. He looked at her steadily.

"For the last month I've tried. I tried so _hard, _Hermione. But you won't leave me. As soon as I saw you collapsed on the ground, I couldn't lie anymore."

Her shoulders slumped and she leaned forward, leaned close towards him for just a moment. And then she understood something primitive and basic and frightening about them.

_We are connected, even if we don't want to be._

Because just then she felt the same way as he did. She was tired of lying.

He said her name very softly, his unsure fingertips hovering over her cheekbone. She tilted her head forward and touched her lips to his so lightly that she barely felt it, and then her breath shook out as he lowered his hand and wrapped his arms around her so that she curved in a sharp angle towards him.

"I know," she whispered in quiet song. "I know."

He kissed her again, hard and insistent, and then she stepped away and took off her shoes. She unzipped her skirt at the hip and let it slide down her legs, she unbuttoned her blouse and pushed it off her shoulders. She stood before him in her pale bra and knickers and watched his face. He looked at her for a long while and took her in his arms again until they were both bare and ready. She kissed him and moved, moved, moved until they both saw white.

-

Later, after they had slept on the carpeted floor of his sitting room and eaten dry cereal and bananas for breakfast because it was the only thing they could find, Hermione stepped away from him and went down the stairs. She felt him watch her for a moment and then heard the door close with a barely audible sound like a promise. She walked down the path and saw something she hadn't seen before. She saw two rosebushes intertwined completely as they both sought the sun, one blooming large red flowers and the other white, with roots in the ground far, far away from each other. A thrush sang overhead.

-

The next day found Hermione on Ginny's doorstep. "Ginny, I've got to talk to you. Are you free? Is Harry here?"

Her friend gave her one piercing glance, but she let her in. "He's at the Ministry."

Hermione murmured her thanks and took a seat at the kitchen table while Ginny made them each a cup of tea. She watched the long-awaited glint of gold on the third finger of Ginny's left hand with a faint smile. "Have you started planning the wedding, Gin?"

Ginny suddenly turned and crossed her arms over her chest, leaning against the counter and eyeing Hermione with an incredibly shrewd expression on her face. "I'm glad that you're looking better," she said, smiling knowingly.

"I am?" asked Hermione, a faint flush passing over her cheeks as she tried to ignore the fact that Ginny had just completely side-stepped her question.

"Your color is better. S.P.E.W. dying down?"

Hermione stared at her hands, folded neatly on the table.

"Draco Malfoy show up again?"

She jerked in her chair and looked up into her apparently more-perceptive-than-she-knew friend. "H-How did you know?"

"Sweetheart, you had hot tortured sex with him and didn't see him for a year. You've been miserable since the trial when you saw him again even though you should have been ecstatic because you won your case. You come to my house with a flush and a post-coital satisfied glaze in your eyes and you still manage to look confused. I don't need to be a rocket scientist to figure this out."

Hermione sighed and let her head fall forward onto the table. She felt Ginny's hands, small and light, on her hair. Her voice sounded muffled against her arm. "I fell down in Diagon Alley yesterday and he was there. I must have passed out because I woke up at Malfoy Manor. I tried to leave but Draco saw me and he told me… a lot of things. Scary things. I just got sick of pretending everything again. I slept with him again."

"Was it angry like last time?"

"No."

"Was it good?"

"Mhmm." Hermione propped her chin up on her forearm and stared through her hair at the woman across the table from her who understood so well.

Ginny smiled at her. ­_Smiled. _"Was he good to you?"

"Yeah."

"Good. Do you love him?"

Hermione's eyes froze in place. "I… I don't know. I can't tell. I don't think so."

Ginny pushed the steaming cup of tea towards Hermione so she could sit up and take a long drink that burned down her throat. After a deep breath, Hermione continued. "He's taking me out to dinner on Friday."

"Ahh. Are you alright with that?"

"It's going to be strange, but yes."

"'Mione, I'm so glad you're happier."

-

"That one."

"Are you insane? He'll jump her as soon as he sees her in it. I say the black."

Hermione rolled her eyes at her bickering friends. Blaise sat on her bed while Vulpe pawed through her meager closet, tsking her lack of clothes. Deciding on a proper dress for the famed "Malfoy Date"—dubbed appropriately by Vulpe—was turning out to be a major production. Hermione had wondered whether she ought to wear robes, but her friends who more familiar with wizard customs had assured her that the traditional styles were just that, too traditional and slipping slowly but surely out of fashion. Both Vulpe and Ginny had volunteered several garments for the occasion, but Hermione was rather picky when it came to fancier clothes, a condition that was not being helped by the uncomfortable case of nerves she had contracted sometime around midday.

"Isn't that the point?" asked Blaise cheekily, eyeing Hermione up and down as she apprehensively tugged up the neck of the slinky red dress she was wearing. It skimmed tightly down the line of her body, stopping in a slanted cut just above her knees, and displayed enough cleavage to stop an adolescent boy in his tracks. She glared at him and he averted his eyes with a sly smirk.

Vulpe squeaked suddenly. "I'll be right back." She disappeared with a crack.

Hermione sank down on the bed next to Blaise with a shaky sigh. He, hearing and seeing her nerves, slung an arm around her shoulders and pulled her to him. "Alright, gorgeous?"

She nodded. "I'll be fine. I just… It's just strange to be going on a date with Draco Malfoy."

"Yeah. But I've known him forever, Hermione, and he's not the kind of person to hurt someone he loves."

"He doesn't love me," she responded immediately.

"We'll see, won't we?" Blaise grinned as Hermione hit him weakly in the shoulder.

"He _doesn't _love me. He's confused about me."

"Exactly."

Just then Vulpe appeared abruptly, causing Hermione to jump up from the bed with a surprised yelp. "Ta-da! Oh, sorry Hermione. I've the perfect dress!" She waved a mass of fabric about, grinning wildly. It was a mid-length dress of either burnt orange or rust, depending on the light, which shone off its folds with a distinctly understated glow. Hermione glanced at it doubtfully.

"It's _orange_."

"Merlin knows ­_I_ can't wear it; it transforms my lovely pale skin into that of a ghost," she simpered, batting her eyelashes prettily. "I don't know what I was thinking when I bought it. _But_, I think with your warmer coloring it will bring out the gold in your skin and hair."

With a shrug Hermione snatched the dress from Vulpe's appeased grasp and went into the loo. The dress fit surprisingly well, considering Vulpe's slight frame when compared to her own, more rounded one. She made sure the thin straps rested comfortably over her shoulders and zipped up the back as far as she could without hurting herself. Blaise let out a low whistle through his teeth when she stepped from the lavatory and Vulpe's grin grew wider. Hermione chanced a look in the mirror and decided immediately that she liked the dress, "orange" as it was.

-

She managed to throw Blaise and Vulpe into the floo ten minutes before he arrived. She sat on the couch, and then a chair, and then the stool in her kitchen because she couldn't calm her nerves, the fluttering raptors in her belly and throat. A knock sounded at the door and she nearly fell off her stool. She fought the outrageous urge to arm herself with her can of pepper spray as she went to the entrance of her flat.

He looked at her a long while when she opened the door.

"Hi."

"Hello."

-

"_**You must have chaos within you to give birth to a dancing star."**_

_**-- Friedrich Nietzsche**_

-

**Author's Note**: Oh God, I know how evil I am. Mwaha. I'm sorry! The surges of power that accompany these awful cliffhangers are addicting, I think.

I hope Draco wasn't out of character in the first bit of this chapter, and if he was my excuse is that he's finally let down all of his guard and self-imposed protection. There—try to argue with that!

I've always wanted a burnt-orange/rust-colored dress, by the way, considering that I am the only person I know who can pull off orange. I'm not bragging, people, it's a fact. In my little world, Hermione looks phenomenal in a little orange dress, so there. I get bored of black and red and blue and normal colors. And yes, I do know how pointless that little dress scene was, but Blaise and Vulpe are so fun to write and I like a little girly-corny stuff every once in a while, despite what it may seem like.

Also, someone go look up the significance of white and red roses together.

Mmm. Something about the image of confused/angsty/turned-on Draco Malfoy staring at Hermione while she looks so gorgeous for a full minute is really, really sexy hot, I think. Mmm. I can see the chiseled jaw and concentrated gaze now...

ARGH! I finished this chapter a _WEEK_ ago, and damn wouldn't let me post it! I finished it the night before I was going on vacation for the exact purpose of pleasing you guys! Ugh. Soo frustrating. I'm sorry, but I really did have it finished a week ago.

Good news: I've already written the first bit of the next chapter (on _notebook paper because I had no computer_! Worship me, please! No, don't, actually, because it would be frightening.)

I find—strangely and inexplicably—that I have far more difficulty writing happy things or situations that turn out for the better than angsty and depressing things. Hmm. And I'm not even that much of a depressed person. Maybe I am inside. I certainly don't feel very depressed most of the time. Any thoughts? Let us have a Socratic seminar in the review board, shall we? We can pretend to be in university at Cambridge. No, scratch that. It would be really annoying.

I'm terribly sick and hacking up green-colored stuff, so excuse my oddities and peculiarities.

As always and forever, I love everyone who reads this even if you don't like it and I'm so completely elated that this little story has received so many reviews, all thanks to you.

And, as always and forever, tell me what you think.

Ooo! I forgot. This story has received the **Runner Up Award** at the **Dramione Awards Site** for **WIP**! I'm so happy! It was such a nice surprise and a real treat for me to see during last week was a bit trying in all other areas.

Ooo! I forgot again. This is important like a good fanfic always is. I've forgotten an author I really really like. She's (He's?) written a post-war story in which someone _different_ than Voldemort ended up being in control (I love originality. Starts with an "M"?), and he really has a problem with women's lib, apparently. Hermione has become a sex-slave in these strange commun/society/cults of men who "own" women (hmm) and she thinks everyone she loves is dead until Draco shows up and teaches her what _real_ sex is like. He reunites her with Harry and everyone (enter floo communication with books (an extremely sweet scene), pregnant Ginny, and angst) and Hermione becomes confused and all that. Ring a bell?

And yes, I know it's an obscenely long author's note. Sorry. The only truly important part is the last paragraph and, of course, the part where I thank all of you numerous times as always. :)


	14. Connected

Chapter: Connected

-

"_**Beware of those in whom the will to punish is strong."**_

_**-- Friedrich Nietzsche**_

-

This is how she remembers the end of the world:

But first.

The day after, (when all was silent and finished; after) the field outside the old school was a wash of black and green.

And then.

During the chaos: red. Everything was red and she couldn't see flashes the color of every rainbow but she knew they were there: purple, yellow, pink, orange, blue.

Green.

She looked out over the grass that was once green (the color-curse of green) and saw one body, a creature with different parts and different colors that moved separately but the same, all connected and fighting together.

(fighting)

She could not aim so she guessed. Time was a box she could not open so she guessed. She could not understand (the only time, the **_only_** time) right and wrong

(which side?)

so she just _guessed_.

They say that glory hides in war, waits for a quiet time to surface and spread its forgiveness, its light. She says that glory disappears, because there was not glory that day, or the day after when the quiet time had come and gone.

(black and green, she remembers)

Just then, in the middle of everything that was, she imagined a thought that made her step shake like a startled thing.

_­­I wonder if he has died yet?_

Because she didn't really think anyone could survive this day.

Because, you see, she had left his side sometime in the beginning.

You see, don't you?

And then.

(she remembers this part almost the clearest of them all—almost)

She saw one of her boys, the other, the one with the most cause of everyone to be afraid even if he wasn't. He stood in the terrible white shadows of this place they once both loved while _He_, the cause of the black and green in the field the day after, stood in the dark.

The air around the boy (not Harry, never Harry, because those were not Harry's eyes) began to move and tremor like heat on a frozen day.

A startled thing.

The boy looked at _Him_ with the black things on his face (those were **_not_** his eyes), and _He_ could not look back.

The air shook, and the boy's mouth began to move.

A startled thing.

And then everyone was on the ground because the air **_exploded_**.

A startled THING.

She lifted her head and her neck creaked. She saw the boy and _Him_ caught and connected (connected and fighting together) by arcs of light that would have been beautiful.

Both screamed until the end, noises that sounded like throats could rip out.

And then, **_green_**.

_(A flash of green and an inhuman sound, a dissonant shriek. Two silhouettes fall and only one is breathing. Victory and pain. She screams.)_

She ran. She ran through the fallen creature that was connected and fighting together.

And the boy got up, shaking like a startled thing, and she saw his (Harry's) eyes, the color-curse of green.

Out on the field, only those without the black burn mark rose from the ground on conquering (but not victorious, never victorious) feet.

-

_(She felt like turning to him when they lay on the floor of his empty house after they saw white. She felt like saying "I'm glad you weren't there that day. I'm glad you missed the end of the war" because she had seen his black burn mark.)_

-

And then the end of the world was over for most.

For most.

_(All that she has lost.)_

Later, much later, they looked at those who had not stood up. She looked for what she already knew was true.

She had left his side sometime in the beginning and he had not returned in the end.

(You see, don't you?)

And she finally saw someone she loved. Someone she loves.

_(An ashen face and blossom of blood.)_

And this is the part, the hardest part, because she remembers it the clearest of them all.

She made a sound that hurt, and sound that tore her lungs and heart from her body, and Harry, that boy who was once someone else, held her with his arms.

The sky (not heavens, never heavens) opened up and wept rain hard enough to blur everything else.

And the day after (when all was silent and finished; after), the rain made a green, green film (a mold, they said, but it made her sick to think like that) to cover those bodies that had not moved since the day before, and the blood that soaked through the clothes and once green grass and soil turned black like necrosis.

Death, she learned on the day after, is black and green.

But first, that first moment when the world crumbles around you

_(She is alone. An ashen face and blossom of blood.)_

_(Hogwarts. Home. Love. All that she has lost. The war shines red in her mind.)_

death is red and hard.

This is how she remembers the end of the world.

This is not a victory.

_**This is not a story for telling.**_

-

On her doorstep he touched her elbow and they disappeared like camouflage. Hermione stumbled when the apparation completed itself and Draco's hand moved from a mere connection to a strong grip on her forearm, keeping her upright. "Thank you," she said, her hair falling over her face.

He nodded and watched her, lifted his hand halfway like he wanted to touch her again, brush her hair back from her face, but she did it first. Instead he said, quietly, "Of course."

She smiled faintly, a flush high on her cheeks for a reason she didn't understand because within the span of the last week she had been bare and exposed on the floor of this man's sitting room, gasping and crying with him. But she wouldn't think about that now.

And then she lifted her head and saw where they were.

"Oh… _Draco_." It slipped out before she could remember herself.

The empty halls of the National Gallery hung shadowed and soft, a languidly winding serpent with treasured walls for insides through which they walked. Hermione's breath felt rigid because she loved this place so much and they were _here_. She turned to him, eyes shining. He caught her gaze and the corners of his mouth lifted just enough. "How?" She breathed.

He shrugged tightly, a trace of bitterness in his tone when he gave the answer. "Malfoy fortune, you know. People will do anything for money."

She was far too entranced to be offended by this, by breaking the rules. "Oh yes, that damned money," she said, her tone almost playful. But he had reminded her who he was and who she was and what _this_ meant.

He was very quiet, but it was strangely comfortable. She felt him watching her as she moved with a fantastic reverence through the dimly lighted halls of the museum, sharing anecdotes and dialogue from her childhood visits as she encountered a remembered work of art. They didn't touch, they didn't delve too deeply into the reason for his silence and her guilt, but they kept a relatively constant stream of conversation reverberating off the yellow-lighted walls.

And through it all:

_Ron, I'm sorry._

Because she knew she still loved him.

She tried not to think it. She really did. He saw it in her face—_how could he not?_—but said nothing.

They had been walking for nearly three quarters of an hour, through the alabaster garden of statues posed like frosted flowers, over the polished floors that reflected caged masterpieces, by the magnum opuses of so many forgotten and remembered figures, when her hip brushed his and she saw the Rembrandt, stopping to re-memorize for the thousandth time.

He joined her at her side, their placement mirroring that of more than a year ago when the halls had been filled with light and the air around them was buzzing with tension of a different kind. Hermione tilted her head to the side, studying the woman on the stream in the painting. "She looks…private. Like she doesn't know anyone is watching her." Her voice was distant.

"You look beautiful." He was not seeing the painting anymore and when she turned towards him he was _there_.

Her smile faltered because there was everything that was entirely _not_ light-hearted in his eyes. "O-Oh… thank you." He had never said that before. And then, because she felt like something was caving in on her, she stepped forward and put her face to his neck and stayed there, her eyes closed as she let her mouth rest at a hollow in his throat. She tasted the skin that she could feel tremble beneath her lips. He didn't move until his hands caught her upper arms, hard flesh against yielding, and pressed her closer, his head falling so she could feel his breath on the shell-curve of her ear and the rasp of his cheek on her temple.

And she knew there was something _wrong_ about this, about the way they _needed_ one another to keep from falling into something much, much worse. But she didn't pull away.

"I can't…" It came out muffled against his flesh and because she felt like she would cry. His breath fell harshly on her skin and she felt his chest jerk in respiration against her, heave and tighten like panic. She tried again. "I can't…"

_Ron… All. That. She. Has. Fucking. Lost._

It came out in a sob and everything that she had been feeling exploded. "I can't help feeling like I'm _betraying_ something" even as she pressed against him.

She expected him to rage. She expected him to burst and fling her away, eyes flashing and back again to that cold. Because she knew how terribly confused she was and she knew that he was feeling the every little bit of brunt from it.

He must have felt her tense in preparation for hate, rejection, frustration (anything) because he let out his breath in a huff of what could have been amusement. Hermione wanted to move, to see his face, but she was caught in the world of his solidness and skin.

"Granger, do you remember what I called you for the first seven years of our acquaintance? Filthy little mudblood?" Her body went tight and she pressed her cheek into his shoulder because she _remembered_.

He touched her hip, her shoulder, her neck, her lips, her breast. "That was my _life._ You think it was just me calling you those names? It was my father and my mother and the society I lived in. That was how I lived my life until this." His voice went hard and hoarse, like what he was saying hurt him. "You are supposed to be dirty and repulsive to me, but all I want to do right now is kiss you. Everything is uprooted and sideways. I'm betraying everything I've ever known by simply being in the same room voluntarily with you. So let's not speak about betrayal again, shall we?"

And they didn't, and Hermione pressed close to him. And then he, softly and then with more insistence (desperation), did all he wanted to do right then.

And nothing caved in on them. And they did not fall into something worse.

-

They ate on the floor of the Central Hall, wiping up crumbs as they fell on the buffed wood. The food was simple and good. Hermione had taken off her shoes, and they lay forgotten next to her knees. She was telling him how she had planned her lessons, how she had faced a room full of antagonistic former-peers, how she had lived in the year when they had lied to themselves.

That night she learned that Draco Malfoy was a good listener when nothing else was allowed to get in the way. No prejudice. No society. No mold. No dirtyfilthymudbloodspoiltevilpureblood.

After she told him she had received the idea of discussing DNA in class number six from Mr. Weasley, of all people, she stopped and stared at him. "You've changed, Draco. You've changed so much. When I first saw you come into that classroom I didn't think…you acted the same. But you're so different now."

He looked at her from under that pale hair and chewed on a grape thoughtfully before answering. "Loosing your parents and running from both sides can do that to a person. I didn't have time to be an pampered aristocrat."

_Running from both sides._

She must have looked confused.

He shrugged like it didn't mean anything. "Voldemort had his knickers in a twist that I hadn't killed Dumbledore. Not to mention my father wanted to slaughter me."

_Like it didn't mean anything._

Hermione shook her head. "It must have been terrible for you."

"Yeah, yeah it was." He said it as if he was only just realizing it. Like he was unearthing something vital. "It was."

An uncomfortable silence settled over them and Hermione grasped another handful of crackers to fill it. She thought then of the thing she thought of every day.

_Death is black and green._

"Where were you during the last battle?"

"Perth, Australia." He answered immediately.

She looked up in surprise. "Perth?"

He nodded, and she didn't ask.

_Running from both sides._

"I lost Ron that day. I lost everything."

"You were saying his name that night."

It was so unexpected that she dropped the cracker she had been holding and it fell into the folds on the lap of her dress. She looked into his face and saw that there was no hostility there, no blame or jealousy.

_Jealousy?_

"I probably was," she said, because she could think of nothing else.

He nodded, and then asked her about Mr. Weasley's obsession with muggle things, because that had been their subject of conversation before and there wasn't anything more to talk about.

-

At her doorstep he took her into his arms and pressed his forehead against hers. She shut her eyes and breathed.

And of course she knew it was twisted and generally fucked up but she didn't want to leave when he said "thank you."

"For what?"

"For undoing me."

And it was twisted and generally fucked up but she could have said the same thing to him and it would not have been out of place, because somewhere in this warped world they were connected and saving one another.

She kissed his nearly-smiling lips, a long, calm touch that brought the world (everything that hurts and everything that kills) to a halt that almost jarred.

-

That night she finally caught Ron. Reached out with a hand that had no lines and grabbed his arm and pulled.

_Stop running.__Tell me what to do._

He turned to her and he was just as she remembered. No blood, no cold skin, just blue, blue eyes and a smile.

_Hey, 'Mione._

She loved the nickname from his lips.

_I love you._

It felt so _good_ to say it so he could hear.

_I know._

_So what am I supposed to do? I can't forget you._

He grinned like she was telling an ironic joke.

_Don't be stupid, love. No one ever said you had to bloody _forget _me. Just let everything go a bit. I'll always be around, remember. It's not like I'll not be looking out for you._

Hermione was crying and he reached up and touched her, touched her cheek with hands so different than the ones she had felt hours before, the gray eyes in place of blue.

_It's so hard, Ron._

But he was gone and she was awake, tears gathering in the hollows of her eyes as she hunched in an empty bed because tonight she had only allowed Draco to kiss her.

She closed her eyes and saw Ron's face.

_Just let everything go a bit._

-

When she saw him next, when she arrived at his door and knocked a sharp staccato, she told him she was glad, and she told him she was ready to be undone.

-

"**This is what is hardest: to close the open hand because one loves."**

**-- Friedrich Nietzsche**

-

**Author's Note**: Eeek! Almost finished. One more chapter, in fact, and more of an epilogue than anything else. I'm so unbelievably happy that this has been so enjoyed by people and that I am as satisfied as I am with it—a rare thing indeed, believe me.

People will undoubtedly wonder why I've included Hermione's dark experience in the war in the beginning of this comparatively light chapter. The answer is as follows: the story is almost over, and we've never heard much about this huge battle that everyone has been talking about save for the fact that a lot of people died and the good side won. The first part of this chapter reveals a lot about Hermione and why she is the way she is in this world instead of that chipper, sharp student she is in the books. There is also a lot harkening back to the times during and before the war in the part of this chapter that is in the present time. Note the references to her recurring dream at the beginning of the fic. Chapter two, I think. The Last Battle is a massive influence in Hermione's character, obviously, and we need to know. Also, I think it is much more effective to have the beginning at the end than the beginning at the beginning. Understand? Good. Hehe.

I love love love symbolism and metaphor and simile and personification and metonymy. All that shit. All five are in this chapter. Mmm.

I really should be doing actual work right now. I am a master procrastinator.

Thanks to everyone who has ever reviewed or seen or bypassed this story because I love you. And thanks to everyone who gave me the name of the fic I asked about last chapter ("Tangled Up in Blue," by Priah). And thanks to everyone who looked up the symbolism of red and white roses (they mean unity).

Ack! Only one more chapter! What am I going to do? I won't be able to leave this universe. Don't worry, I have some further things (one-shots and the like) in the world of "The Nietzsche Classes" to think about. Angst galore. It's going to be so fun. (Guess! Guess who I'm going to stick together! Just guess! I'm so gleeful right now it should be stupid, and it is.)

Well? Comments? Complaints?


	15. Epilogue

Chapter: Epilogue

-

_**"I fly in dreams, I know it is my privilege, I do not recall a single situation in dreams when I was unable to fly."**_

_**-- Friedrich Nietzsche**_

-

They told her she was insane.

Hermione's hand groped air and lighted on a wiry wrist, wrapped tight around it and held on. Draco glanced sideways at her as he felt her squeeze and the flutter of her nervous pulse.

They were in the Weasley's sitting room, and Harry Potter was fuming.

"_What? _You're ­­­_what_?" He asked, quietly and with that unnerving intensity that was The Boy Who Lived. Draco told him this time, with a glinting expression that _dared,_ because Hermione was afraid of loosing what she knew. I dare you, he didn't say, to stop us. I dare you to hurt her.

Harry was silent for a short eternity, but then he walked towards Hermione and captured both her hands in his. "'Mione… This is what you want?"

"Yes." And her voice was strong.

"He's…"

_Trustworthy. Good. Not going to cause you pain._

"Yes," she responded, knowing exactly what he meant to ask.

He kissed her gently on the forehead, briefly again on the lips like a brother, and then let her go. Hermione, understanding, caught Draco's hand.

-

Their existence together was something full of surprises, stubbornness, and necessity.

Soon, Draco had sold his empty Mansion and bought a smaller, less memorable model. Two weeks later Hermione broke the lease on her flat, packed up her belongings, and arrived on his freshly-painted doorstep with three large boxes and a shelf's worth of books.

His presence calmly saved her, and she grounded him to everything real. His capacity to wound would unexpectedly shock her, and her quick response would unfailingly prompt one of his own. Her abrupt despair, her unwarranted depression, would startle him, and his quick temper would astound her. Their relationship was composed of compromises. This was how they lived.

There were no roses, no happy endings, no unnecessary romance. But there was life and need and acceptance and hope where none had been before, and that was all either of them needed.

It is all _anyone_ needs.

-

It was nearly seven months before Draco said he loved her, and she felt safe replying after two days of quiet, encompassing thought.

Because she did, you see. Love him.

-

_Finis _

-

_**"He who would learn to fly one day must first learn to stand and walk and run and climb and dance; one cannot fly into flying."**_

_**-- Friedrich Nietzsche**_

-

**Final Note: **I can't believe that this is over. It's been such a fantastic journey and I'm so glad to have shared it with you all. Enjoy, take it as it is, and I hope to hear more from you.

I _really_ hope people are satisfied with the ending. I didn't want to make it mushy and perfect and happily ever after because, frankly, I find it annoying. And I couldn't end it so ambiguously as in Ch. 14, and I wanted to write something about how everyone they know deals with their newfound relationship. No convenient pregnancies, no marriage proposal. Just the imperfection of life. I love that it took Draco a long time to work up the courage and conviction to say he loved her and Hermione had to think about it too.

On a side note, this fic won "The I Never Really Loved You Anyway" Award at Dangerous Liaisons! I'm so excited and thankful to anyone who voted. The pretty banner thingy is on my livejournal, which I've just created and is deplorably empty. The link is on my profile, if you're interested.

Also: 600 reviews! Eeek! THANK YOU!

**What's Next**: I'm not completely sure, actually. Hopefully I'll be able to start working on my unfortunately ignored POTC stuff. Hopefully. I know for sure that I will do something else in the universe of "The Nietzsche Classes" revolving around Vulpe, because I love her character. I also will likely write a "V for Vendetta" oneshot or two. That movie is disturbingly awesome. I'll probably get inspired by something else Harry Potter and engross myself in some other project in the future. I'll not promise a sequel, but that's not to say that I won't write anything else about Draco and Hermione's future. If something original and not stupid strikes my fancy, I'm not averse to writing something about them.

As of this moment I'm also writing a completely original short story (in other words, I've had to do all the pesky character creation and development myself, damn it) that's for a national writing competition and is completely different than anything else I've done on fanfiction. I'll post it on my livejournal when its finished (in a couple of weeks probably) if anyone's interested. It's very much based off personal experience, except that the main characters are musical prodigies and I'm not one. Unfortunately.

Keep writing, keep reading, and keep in touch.


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